Radio Special: New England

Leading the way with Dr. Michael Yusef is privileged to partner with local churches worldwide to reach individuals and communities with the gospel. And recently, Dr. Yusef brought a powerful message to Springfield, Massachusetts. It was at an event called Rise Up New England. In addition to music that unified people of diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds in worship, Dr. Yusef shared an evangelistic message where many experienced life-changing repentance and renewal. Up next, portions of this event. We hope that hearing this message from Dr. Yusef and other portions of the evening will lead you to a life change as well.

Learn more about Leading the Way's worldwide ministry when you visit us at ltw.org. And now you've heard this said many times, love is love, right? Well, you've heard it, I've heard it, but is it really true? You know, most of the love that you hear on television and movies that are coming out of Hollywood is selfish at best. When an actor or actress says, baby, I need you, baby, I can't live without you, oh baby, I, I, I, you know what he or she is saying? I love me and I want you to love me too. That's basically about the love that they talk about.

But I came all the way here today from Africa, because that's where I was born. I came all the way here to tell you about a unique, exceptional, and selfless love of God. Jesus tells us that when God loved, He gave. He didn't take, He gave Jesus who came from heaven to show us the true love of God.

He told us in John 3 16, for God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, Jesus, so that whoever believes in Him shall never perish, shall never die, but have everlasting life. It is not selfish love, it is selfless love. It is the love that He has for you is not an occasional love, but it is a permanent love. It is not conditional love, but is unconditional love.

It is not partial love, but it is a complete love. God's love for you is not depending on what you do, but on whether you receive it and accept it or not. The truth is, John 3 16 is very familiar. I know even people outside of the churches and outside of the Christian faith. They know John 3 16, but it is a summary of the Christian faith. John 3 16 is what the Christian faith is all about, and that is what sets the Christian faith apart, and I've studied them all.

We love everybody. We love people of all religions, but what sets the Christian faith apart is John 3 16, for God so loved humanity that He gave His one and only Son to die for you so that you may have eternal life. This is the essence of the Christian faith, and I challenge anyone to find such a declaration in any other religious system, in any other philosophical system. That is what is very, very important to know, because we have so many misguided people, we have so many misinformed people, but Jesus, when He made this declaration, He was saying it to after He told a religious leader one of the hierarchies of the religion of Judaism. After He said to Nicodemus, He said, you must be born again, and immediately He said to him, for God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son to whoever believes in Him shall not perish.

Why did he do that? Because no religion or religious system that can save us, because there is no religion or religious system that can truly deliver us and give us peace and joy in this life. No religious system that can absolutely assure us of heaven with Jesus for all of eternity, but Jesus can. Only when you surrender to His inexplicable love can you be rescued from the abyss. Only in receiving His extravagant love can we be saved. Only by accepting His amazing grace can we be redeemed. But probably some of you are thinking, that's too good to be true. Right?

And it sounds too good to be true. How can a holy God, a righteous God, a sinless God love us so extravagantly like this when we are not even having time for Him? Let me explain it this way. You and I, and every human being on the face of the earth, we are born into a death row. Every human being we are born, every one of us, with an eternal death sentence hanging around our necks.

Every human being has inherited the rebellious genes that we inherited from our first parents. And no one to rescue us. No one to rescue us. There is no one to set us free from death row. No one to set us free from this death sentence. There is one to deliver us from this awaiting judgment.

Oh, God Himself, the holy God, the righteous God, the God who created the universe. He came down to earth in order to set us free. He took our death sentence on Himself on the cross and He says, I can set you free.

When you come to me, I'll set you free. You can be totally forgiven of all your sins, past, present and future. You can accept my payment for your death as my death on that cross. Now I'm here thinking that some of you probably – you don't believe your ears. Can I just come, confess my sins, ask God to forgive me?

And I'm forgiven. Some may refuse to accept that. I think it's just hocus pocus. That doesn't make sense. That I can escape death row?

Yes. I'm here to tell you tonight it is absolutely true. The judge of the universe has paid in full to set you free. Free from addiction, depression, sorrow and sadness. Free from guilt and sin and pain. Free from eternal sentence. Free from all of the punishment of sin that goes with sin. And Jesus took all of our sin upon His sinless body on that cross. That's what you call the great exchange.

The great exchange. He took all of our bad and He gave us all of His good. Praise God. Please listen to me. No matter what you have done in the past, no matter how you have lived in the past, no matter how many times you have rejected His invitation in the past, He is extending His hand and invitation to you tonight. He is extending His invitation for you to come and find true peace of mind, joy and once again be assured of eternity in heaven. Please listen to me.

You know and I know. There are some people who hate God. There are some people who are indifferent toward God. There are some people who are angry with God. There are some people who are falsely accuse God of unfairness and unloving.

But you know why? Because they really do not know the true God. They don't know the true God. They don't know the one true perfect sinless God who took on human flesh in order to take away our sin on His sinless body on the cross. The one true perfect sinless God who bore all of our sins, all of hatred, all of rejection, all of sinfulness, all of guilt upon the cross so that you can be set free. That is the kind of God. That is the kind of God and we need to make sure that people understand this is our God. This is our God. So the question is, why did He do all that?

Why didn't God just yell from heaven and say, hey your people get saved. Do better. Do your best. Come over here.

No, no, no, no, no. Why didn't He do that? So that anyone who would come to Him and acknowledge their sin, their failure, their shortcomings, be able to find forgiveness, eternal joy and peace and eternity with Him in heaven. And that is, my friend, true love. True love. His love gave. His love sacrificed. His life took all of the bad and gave us all of the good.

Far from being indifferent and aloof and kill joy and vindictive. Our God is far from that. Our God is the most loving person you'll ever know in your life.

And He loved not just in words but in action by sacrificing. To understand the heart of God, I want you to try to imagine that someone standing up on top of the mountain, high, looking down at a curvy winding road in the valley below. And he sees you coming in, driving up in a blind alley, a blind spot.

And there is a huge truck barreling down the other side, which you cannot see. But in a matter of minutes, you're going to be toast. And God is calling to you. There is danger ahead. There's certain death around the corner. There is tragedy awaiting.

There is indescribable suffering ahead. Stop. Turn around. Come to me.

Come to me. That's the kind of loving God that I'm inviting you to come to Him tonight. That's the kind of loving God.

He's inviting you to come tonight. For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son so that whosoever believes in Him, trusts in Him, surrender to Him, receives Him as the only Savior and Lord will receive eternal life tonight. I tell people that eternal life did not just begin when they closed their eyes in death.

Eternal life for the believer starts the day they said yes to Jesus. He sacrificed His one and only Son. But also, the Son, the Bible said willingly, Jesus said, I have authority to lay down.

I have authority. I choose to lay my life for you and you and you and me. I believe tonight there will be many people, hundreds of you, are going to respond to His invitation, who will heed the warning when you're coming around the blind alley and you can't see the future and He's inviting you to come to Him, to safety, to eternal life. You see, when God looks at this beautiful arena, mass mutual arena, when He sees, He doesn't see us as masses of people. He sees us as individuals. He knows you by name.

He loves you by name and He calls you by name. But not only that, He sees through us. He sees through us. He sees and sees who's trying to ignore Him and ignore His loving invitation. He sees and He knows who's experienced past wounds and hurt that's stopping them from hearing Him. He knows who is depressed and discouraged. He knows who is frustrated with the difficulties of life. He knows who is angry and bitter. He knows who is living in a meaningless life and long for meaning of their life. He knows who's living in fear and anxiety. He knows who's experienced abuse and therefore a lot of hurt. He knows all of that. He sees through us.

He sees straight through us. And listen, to all and everyone, He is calling and issuing this loving invitation tonight. Come, come, come to the only one who truly loves you for no reason whatsoever. Come to the only one who's offering you true peace of mind here and now and eternity in heaven with Him. Come to the only one who freely, freely wants to forgive you all of your sins when you confess them and repent and turn to Him. Come to the only one who can remove all of the condemnation and judgment that is upon your life and upon my life when we are born with sin. Come to Him, for God so loved the world.

So that He, when you believe in Him, when you surrender to Him, when you repent of your sin and say, Forgive me, have eternal life. Be assured of eternal life. I promise you, you will never be the same. You will never be the same. Your life will be thoroughly transformed.

I know what happened in my life. My friend, God's Word said, The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life. And He wants to give you that gift tonight. But you have to come to Him. You have to come in repentance and you have to come in faith. You have to be willing to ask for Him to forgive you.

You have to receive that gift. Listen, when Jesus said, For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that meant that when you come to Him, He will not respond to you in anger. No! He will not respond to you in ruthless justice.

No! He will respond to you in compassion. He will be moved toward you and your request to come to Him with love, true love. The other wonderful thing about our God's love is this. We hear a lot about discrimination these days. I grew up being discriminated against. Never bothered me because I knew God did not discriminate against me. The one thing about the love of God is, it does not discriminate. It does not discriminate.

It does not discriminate. He comes to the poor and He comes to the rich. He comes to the black and He comes to the white and everything in between like me. He loves the powerless and He loves the powerful. He responds equally to the famous and the infamous and the nobody.

God loves the brokenhearted and He loves those whose backs are bent with toil of suffering. Listen to me. Here is the absolute truth. Listen carefully. Not everyone, this tears me up.

It really does. Not everyone whom God loves will accept His free gift of salvation and eternal life. But listen, that does not change God's love. That does not change God's love.

For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only begotten Son so that whosoever, whosoever, that's you and you and you, whosoever, only whosoever comes to Him will receive all of the benefits of His love. Salvation may be free to you, free to me, but it costs God a colossal price. It costs Him His one and only Son who coexisted in the Godhead since before eternity began. It costs Him the shedding of the precious sinless blood of Jesus on that cross. It costs Him the pain of carrying your sin and mine on His sinless, holy body. It costs Him the pain of carrying the shame of hanging on that cross naked.

The Bible said that the perfect and sinless one was made sin for us. Why? Because He took your place and He took my place. He took your place. He took your place on that cross. My friend, please listen. God's Word said that you could have gained all of the wealth of the world, but it would not compare to a few seconds of eternity in torment. The Bible said, the Scripture is very clear, what shall profit a man, what shall profit a woman, what shall profit anybody if they gain the whole world and lose their soul? None.

None. I know that in the midst of our confused culture, in the midst of our canceled culture, in the midst of our disturbed and broken culture, we have distorted view of God. I know that. It breaks my heart, but I am going around the world trying to correct those views.

We really do. But what Jesus is telling us here in John 3, 16 is very familiar as I said, that God's giving is His nature. That's His nature.

Why? Because His love is His essence. His love is His essence.

Hear me right, please. Do not listen to people and what they say about God. Listen to what God said about Himself. And God loved us when we were unlovable. God loved us when we were at enmity with Him. God loved us when we hated Him.

God loved us when we were filled with pride and arrogance and God loved us when we took all of His blessings for granted and never gave Him thanks for it. And that is why the next two verses after John 3, 16, 17 and 18, the next two verses, again, I'm not going to prolong this, but listen carefully. Listen to what Jesus said. For God did not send His Son to condemn the world, but that the world would be saved through Him. Whoever believes in Him, whoever surrenders to Him, whoever humbled themselves before Him will not be condemned, will not be condemned. Oh, but whosoever rejects Him, they got themselves condemned.

God didn't condemn them, they condemned themselves. And you know when Jesus told us a story about Lazarus and the rich man, one ended up in the place of torment, one in the bosom of Abraham. You know the man who lived for self all of his life when he ended in that place of torment in Hades? It took him only few seconds in Hades and he became a great evangelist.

And he said, Father Abraham, send Lazarus to rise from the dead to warn my brothers. I don't want him to come to this place. Condemned himself. Whoever rejects him stands condemned already. The choice is yours. The decision is yours.

The verdict is yours. Think about this, John 3.16. Think about it with me, just go through it word for word. God, the greatest lover, so loved the greatest degree, the world the greatest number that He gave the greatest act, His one and only Son the greatest gift, believed the greatest simplicity, in Him the greatest person, shall not perish the greatest deliverance but have the greatest certainty, eternal life the greatest position. Oh Father in the name of Jesus I pray for all these precious, precious brothers and sisters. I pray Father God as they turn to you in faith as they turn to you in repentance. Father I thank you that your promises that you will forgive them and that you will restore them and that you'll give them a new life in Christ. I pray for strength from above, strength that can only come from the Holy Spirit. Father that they will walk in the newness of life and I pray that everyone here who does not have a church find a home church and be part of it as they grow in you in Jesus name I pray and all of God's people said praise the Lord.

You're listening to portions of a recent Leading the Way event held in Springfield, Massachusetts where local churches partnered with Leading the Way to bring the gospel to the northeast through an event called Rise Up New England. Did today's message from Dr. Yusef stir up faith questions or life questions in your heart? Connect with a Leading the Way pastor or counselor today. Start your conversation by filling out a short contact form at ltw.org slash jesus. As a listener supported ministry Leading the Way relies on the prayers and the generosity of friends just like you to reach this community and communities just like it worldwide. Take a moment, learn ways that Leading the Way is taking the gospel to the world. Stand with Dr. Yusef in the open door campaign. The place to start ltw.org. This program is brought to you by Leading the Way with Dr. Michael Yusef.