Obsessed With God

24/12/2025

Every Christmas, our world hangs lights, sings carols, and plasters sentimental pictures of baby Jesus everywhere. Cute, soft, harmless. But don’t kid yourself—Jesus didn’t stay a baby. He grew up, He opened His mouth, and what came out shook the world. He said and did things so astonishing, so explosive, that no religious leader on earth could match them. He claimed He was without sin. He claimed He was God. Let that sink in.

This isn’t just a “spiritual leader.” This isn’t one voice among many. Every major religion has its founder—but none of them dared say what Jesus said about Himself. Jesus didn’t give us the option to treat Him as a “good teacher.” He didn’t leave that door open. He called Himself God—clearly, repeatedly, unapologetically.

And if that claim were false? He would’ve been guilty of the ultimate offense—breaking the first commandment, committing blasphemy. And the religious leaders knew it. That’s why they kept trying to kill Him. Eventually, they succeeded.

Matthew tells the story straight (Matt 26:63–65):

“But Jesus remained silent. And the high priest said to him, “I adjure you by the living God, tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God.” Jesus said to him, “You have said so. But I tell you, from now on you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of heaven.” Then the high priest tore his robes and said, “He has uttered blasphemy. What further witnesses do we need? You have now heard his blasphemy.”

Jesus wasn’t misunderstood. His enemies heard Him perfectly. They knew exactly what He was claiming: equality with God (John 5:18). Billy Graham once nailed it when he said: “Jesus wasn’t just teaching truth; He was truth Himself. God in the flesh.”

Jesus never backed down, He never recanted, never softened the claim.

John says that Jesus declared, “Before Abraham was, I AM.” That’s God’s personal name. Thats why the people who heard it grabbed stones. They knew exactly what He meant.

Later He said, “I and the Father are one.” The Jews picked up stones again to stone him. Jesus answered them, “I have shown you many good works from the Father; for which of them are you going to stone me?” The Jews answered him, “It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you but for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself God.” (John 10:30-33)

The famed New York judge WJ Gaynor looked at the evidence and concluded that Jesus was executed for one reason: blasphemy; claiming to be God.

So let’s be honest:
The baby in the manger grew up—and became the most divisive, controversial figure in human history because He claimed to be God in the flesh. If God in the flesh died in our place and for our sins and raised Himself up again, then that is a big deal that needs to be taken seriously.

Here’s the real question—the same one every person ultimately has to answer:

Do you believe Him?

(The image below is of the Megiddo Mosaic, the earliest known inscription identifying Jesus as God, from roughly 230 AD )

24/05/2025

One who is forgiven by God has the ability to forgive in the same way.

December 07, 2016 By Andrew Smith “As it is, I rejoice, not because you were grieved, but because you were grieved into repenting. For you felt a godly grief, so that you suffered no loss through us. For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grie...

20/04/2025

Happy Resurrection Sunday!

"For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures" (1 Corinthians 15:3-4)

06/03/2025

Even to move mountain… or cyclones…
(If God so chooses)

26/12/2024

What is Christmas all about?

The one true and living God created man from the dust of the earth, in His own image and likeness. Male and female He created them and called their name Adam (man)

In a single act of simple disobedience the first man, following the temptation and deception of His wife, as head and root of all who would descend from him, plunged the whole of mankind into a state of death and rebellion against their creator.

Dogs produce puppies and cats produce kittens. Sinners produce sinners. There is no escape and in his dead heart of sin and left to himself, man wouldn’t want one anyway.

The reason that eternal fiery damnation is the just sentence for sin against God is because of the God who it is against. A single bite from a piece of forbidden fruit is fatal. Not because of the fruit, but because God is perfectly righteous and holy. Even the slightest defiance of His will demands death.

Thank God that the story doesn’t end there, which it could have and He would have been perfectly just in leaving all men descended from Adam to die in their sin.

However, before ever He said “LET THERE BE LIGHT” God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit had already decreed a purpose even for the sin of man.

God cannot simply overlook sinful rebellion and let it go. His perfect holy justice forbids it. Sin must be paid for. Just as in a functioning human society, imperfect though they all are, crime must be paid for. And the penalty must fit the crime.

When the crime is against God Himself, eternal concision death is the only fitting penalty. If any are to be saved, who can pay that penalty and redeem them? Seeing that all men are born sinfully dead in Adam, none of His descendants qualify. Even if a sinless man could be found, he could only pay for the sins of one other man.

God’s eternally begotten Son Himself entered humanity, conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of a young Jewish first century virgin woman named Mary. Jewish because of the Father’s even then ancient covenant with Abraham in which was promised that in Abraham’s seed would all the nations of the Earth be blessed. This was the fulfillment of that promise.

As proclaimed in the song above: “in the weakness of a baby, …God had come to Earth”

Jesus of Nazareth. Fully God and fully sinless man because Adam was not His father. He would live a life of sinless perfection, fully obeying all of God’s law and then offer Himself as the perfect blameless sacrifice in payment for the violation of that law for all who would trust Him for their salvation from sin and death.

Because He was fully man He could die in man’s place. Because He is fully God, that death could cover as many as the Father might please. Because He had no sin of His own, death could not hold Him.

His life FOR theirs so that His life could BE theirs.

Dear readers if this is not what Christmas is to you, then you’re doing it wrong.

A “Christian” is not somebody who agrees with a sufficiently persuasive package of propositions. Somebody who agrees with the Bible. A Christian is somebody who has been supernaturally raised from death in Adam and born again as a new creature in Christ into the very family of the most high God. Again, His life FOR theirs so that His life can BE theirs.

The trouble with people is not what they do. The trouble is what they are. What they do is merely the natural outworking of what they are.

Regardless of what folks may or may not do, they cannot change what they are. Only the power of the Holy Spirit can do that and only in those who confess Jesus as Lord and believe in their heart that God raised Him from the dead.

Is that you?

If it is then you will necessarily be growing in love for what God loves and hatred for what God hates. It cannot be otherwise for God’s true children and worshipers, Jesus Christ’s true brethren of which He is the firstborn. We know what God loves and hates from His word, the Holy Bible. That’s also how we know everything in this message. A sure sign of where somebody is with the Lord is their attitude toward His Word.

If you know that’s not you, it can be. Just for the asking from a broken heart of faith that recognizes it’s own guilt and helplessness and the bloody cross of Jesus Christ as it’s only hope. His life FOR yours so that His life can BE yours. Full, free and forever.

If you don’t want that to be you and you persist in this life of self willed sinful rebellion against Him who made you, then you will pay for your own sin for all of eternity. Either in Christ or in yourself, ALL sin WILL be paid for. Whether you believe that or not is entirely irrelevant to anything beyond determining your own eternal destiny. By the time you are sure it is, it will be too late. It is appointed unto man once to die and after this the judgement.

We read in these news articles day in and day out about all these competing human agendas. God’s agenda is the only one that ultimately matters and His Agenda is to glorify Himself by displaying all of His blinding perfections before His creation.

To exalt His own perfect holiness, judgment and justice in damning His enemies on one hand, and His own perfect mercy, grace and love in redeeming a people for Himself from among them on the other.

We pray in this holiday season that God in Christ will receive all the glory that is rightfully due Him and His great name.

-Greg Smith

06/07/2024

God’s Providence in Great Reversals
8-10
Wayne Kuypers

29/06/2024

God’s Providence in Pivotal Moments
5-7
Wayne Kuypers

22/06/2024

God’s Providence in Successes, Setbacks & Scandals
3-4
Wayne Kuypers

15/06/2024

God’s Providence Sets the Stage
1-2
Wayne Kuypers

09/06/2024

Introduction to the Book of
Wayne Kuypers

04/05/2024

Our Responsibility to God's Family: Sincere Love
Part 3 (Romans 12:9-13)
Wayne Kuypers

Study Notes: https://bit.ly/3Ug9MAr

Notes for younger people:
https://bit.ly/3UeF36U

27/04/2024

Our Responsibility to God's Family: Sincere Love
Part 2 (Romans 12:9-13)
Wayne Kuypers

Study Outline:
https://bit.ly/3Q6aDBd

Youth outline:
https://bit.ly/49BHIfn