Sunday School Lesson

1. Malachi 3 and 4
A Pure People
May 31, 2015
First Baptist Church
Jackson, Mississippi
USA
What’s the number one thing?
The Glory of God!
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http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-KFOtNWjTX5s/UdT_aGKSebI/AAAAAAAAAB0/ieKqL_IsJHg/s960/1031-wallpaper-slide-v2.gif
Corinthians 10:31 NKJV
31 Therefore, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of
God.
May Memory Verse:
2 Corinthians 9:7 NIV
7 Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not
reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.

2. Positioning yourself to focus and rely on God for the strength, provision, &
wisdom you need.
On Mondays, beginning June 1, our church family will receive prayer requests
for the week upon which you can focus in addition to you own personal prayers.
Consider fasting on a certain day each week, or abstaining from a certain food
as a part of your discipline to pray during this 90 day period.

3. Monday, June 08, 2015, 9:00 AM - Friday, June 12, 2015, 12:00 PM
Sunday, June 28, 2015, 6:00 - 8:00 PM
We have three challenges that the Education Department has placed before us
in 2015:
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1.) Memorize the monthly memory verses and know each month we are hiding
God’s Word in our heart.
http://rejoiceministries.org/images/hiding-gods-word-banner.jpg

4. January verse: Romans 10:9
February verse: Ephesians 2:8-9
March verse: Romans 3:23
April verse: I Peter 1:3
April Memory Verse:
1 Peter 1:3 NIV
3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In His great mercy He
has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ
from the dead,
2.) Share your faith with one person each month and build a relationship with
them, so they will become a believer in 2015 as God uses you to plant seeds
with that person.
Luke 19:11-27
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3). Ask two Sunday School class members to share how they have seen God at
work during the week.
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5. http://www.wordtruthpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/BiblicalHistory-BigPicture-blbk.jpg
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6. Malachi 3:1-18 NKJV
The Coming Messenger
1 “Behold, I send My messenger,
And he will prepare the way before Me.
And the Lord, Whom you seek,
Will suddenly come to His temple,
Even the Messenger of the covenant,
In Whom you delight.
Behold, He is coming,”
Says the Lord of hosts.
2 “But who can endure the day of His coming?
And who can stand when He appears?
For He is like a refiner’s fire (purifying)
And like launderers’ soap (cleansing).
3 He will sit as a refiner and a purifier of silver;
He will purify the sons of Levi,
And purge them as gold and silver,
That they may offer to the Lord
An offering in righteousness.
4 “Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem
Will be pleasant to the Lord,
As in the days of old,
As in former years.
5 And I will come near you for judgment;
I will be a swift witness
Against sorcerers,
Against adulterers,
Against perjurers,
Against those who exploit wage earners and widows and orphans,
And against those who turn away an alien—
Because they do not fear Me,”
Says the Lord of hosts.
6 “For I am the Lord, I do not change;
Therefore you are not consumed, O sons of Jacob.
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7. 7 Yet from the days of your fathers
You have gone away from My ordinances
And have not kept them.
Return to Me, and I will return to you,”
Says the Lord of hosts.
“But you said,
‘In what way shall we return?’
Do Not Rob God
8 “Will a man rob God?
Yet you have robbed Me!
But you say,
‘In what way have we robbed You?’
In tithes and offerings.
9 You are cursed with a curse,
For you have robbed Me,
Even this whole nation.
10 Bring all the tithes into the storehouse,
That there may be food in My house,
And try Me now in this,”
Says the Lord of hosts,
“If I will not open for you the windows of heaven
And pour out for you such blessing
That there will not be room enough to receive it.
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11 “And I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes,
So that he will not destroy the fruit of your ground,
Nor shall the vine fail to bear fruit for you in the field,”
Says the Lord of hosts;
12 “And all nations will call you blessed,
For you will be a delightful land,”
Says the Lord of hosts.

8. https://c1.staticflickr.com/7/6049/5906156217_489944d63e_z.jpg
The People Complain Harshly
13 “Your words have been harsh against Me,”
Says the Lord,
“Yet you say,
‘What have we spoken against You?’
14 You have said,
‘It is useless to serve God;
What profit is it that we have kept His ordinance,
And that we have walked as mourners
Before the Lord of hosts?
15 So now we call the proud blessed,
For those who do wickedness are raised up;
They even tempt God and go free.’”
A Book of Remembrance
16 Then those who feared the Lord spoke to one another,
And the Lord listened and heard them;
So a book of remembrance was written before Him
For those who fear the Lord
And who meditate on His name.
17 “They shall be Mine,” says the Lord of hosts,
“On the day that I make them My jewels
And I will spare them
As a man spares his own son who serves him.”
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18 Then you shall again discern
Between the righteous and the wicked,
Between one who serves God
And one who does not serve Him.
Malachi 3:1-18 NKJV

9. http://hopehelphealing.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/39.MALACHI.4.jpg
Then, in chapter 4, we have the prediction of the Day of the Lord and of the Sun
of Righteousness Who ushers it in.
The first verse is a vivid description of the Great Tribulation period –
Malachi 4:1 NKJV
The Great Day of God
1a “For behold, the day is coming,
Burning like an oven,
And all the proud, yes, all who do wickedly will be stubble.
And the day which is coming shall burn them up,”
Says the Lord of hosts,
“That will leave them neither root nor branch.
(In other words, they shall be consumed.)
In the Book of Revelation we read that at one fatal swoop one-fourth of the
population of the world will be wiped out (Rev. 6:8).
http://home.earthlink.net/~serfpub/fourhorsemen.jpg
Revelation 6:8 NKJV
8 So I looked, and behold, a pale horse. And the name of him who sat on it was
Death, and Hades followed with him. And power was given to them over a fourth
of the earth, to kill with sword, with hunger, with death, and by the beasts of the
earth.

10. Malachi 4:2-6 NKJV
2 But to you who fear My name
The Sun of Righteousness shall arise
With healing in His wings;
And you shall go out
And grow fat like stall-fed calves.
3 You shall trample the wicked,
For they shall be ashes under the soles of your feet
On the day that I do this,”
Says the Lord of hosts.
4 “Remember the Law of Moses,
My servant, which I commanded him in Horeb for all Israel,
With the statutes and judgments.
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ec0.pinimg.com/736x/2e/e1/90/2ee19058747adb013a66f2af5105b7a5.jpg
5 Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet
Before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord.
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6 And he will turn
The hearts of the fathers to the children,
And the hearts of the children to their fathers,
Lest I come and strike the earth with a curse.”
Malachi 4:2-6 NKJV

11. John Piper
Born: January 11, 1946
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John Piper was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee where his father, Bill, was a
traveling evangelist and church planter.
• The Piper family eventually moved to Greenville, South Carolina, where he
spent the remainder of his youth.
John married Noël Henry in 1968, and together they have four sons, a daughter,
and twelve grandchildren.
• Piper attended Wheaton College (1964–68) & completed a Bachelor of
Divinity degree at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California.
John did his doctoral work in New Testament Studies at the University of Munich,
Germany (1971–74).
• His mother died in December 1974 in a bus wreck in Israel and his 1990
booklet What's the Difference? included a tribute to her.
Upon completion of his doctorate, he taught Biblical Studies at Bethel University
and Seminary in Saint Paul, Minnesota, for six years (1974–1980). He served as
Pastor for Preaching and Vision of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis,
Minnesota for 33 years.
On January 11, 2006, he announced that he had been diagnosed with prostate
cancer and Piper responded to his diagnosis with the following:
"This news has, of course, been good for me. The most dangerous thing in the
world is the sin of self-reliance and the stupor of worldliness. The news of cancer
has a wonderfully blasting effect on both. I thank God for that. The times with
Christ in these days have been unusually sweet."
Piper underwent successful surgery on February 14, 2006.

12. This message is titled:
The Sun of Righteousness Will Rise
December 20, 1987
Scripture: Malachi 4:1-3
Topic: The Person of Christ
Three astounding effects Jesus has had on our world:
1) One third of the earth’s population call themselves Christian.
2) His birthday divides history in half.
3) His resurrection sets Sunday apart.
1. Those Who Call Themselves Christian
One third of the world's
population today calls itself
Christian.
That is, 2.44 billion people of the
world's 7.325 billion have come
under the sway of this Man Jesus
and say that Christianity is their
religion.
http://chato.cl/blog/files/religions_world.jpg
Not only that, Christianity is the most extensive and universal religion in history.
There are Christian churches in every inhabited country in the world and in two-
thirds of the world's 223 countries the population is over 50% Christian.
So the first indisputable significance of the presence of Jesus Christ on this earth
is that the life of this Man has influenced more people over the course of human
history than any other single man.
Buddha, Confucius, Mohammed, or even Moses do not compare in the extent of
their influence on history and the world.

13. http://godclear.com/images/jesus.jpg
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2. The Dating System
Second, virtually every person in the modern western, and most of the
non-western, world call this year 2015 AD.
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14. The reason bankers and butchers, car dealers and doctors, teachers and
attorneys, computer programmers and presidents date their checks “2015" is
because Jesus Christ was born 2,015 years ago.
No other man in history has been accorded the honor of dividing history in half—
and with such definitive influence that millions who do not call Him Lord are
forced to bear witness daily to His on-going importance in the world by using the
date 2015.
3. The Setting Apart of Sunday
All over the western world, and in a large part of the non-western world,
Sunday is recognized as a holiday, and most of these western cultures
recognize a difference even between Saturday and Sunday.
The historical reason for this is that Jesus Christ rose from the dead on Sunday.
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Why Does Jesus Have Such an Effect on the World?
The religious, historical, and cultural significance of the birth of Jesus Christ is so
huge that no one can begin to give it an adequate description.
Now that fact, in and of itself, before we even turn to the Bible, confronts you and
me with a profound choice: will we ignore this Man and take Him lightly in spite
of His being the most influential man whoever lived, or will we inquire earnestly
into Who this Man was and is and why He has changed the world so deeply?
Why is the birth and death and resurrection of this Man having this kind of effect
on the world?
There are many reasons why people don't give whole hearted agreement to the
Biblical witness about Jesus Christ—why people hold back from full, red-
blooded commitment to Christ—why they watch the drama of redemption
unfolding in history like a spectator instead of a participant.

15. Sometimes it isn't because they see logical or historical obstacles but instead it's
often because they don't see that it really makes any difference in their lives.
The whole thing seems irrelevant to real life to them. It doesn't connect.
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It's like some esoteric scientific claim about the molecule.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/41/Caffeine_Molecule.png
It may well be true, but the likelihood of it making much difference in my life is
so remote that I hardly need to make any commitment to the truth of the
molecular theory.
Leave that for the scientists.
And leave Jesus for the religious.
I've got my life to live.
Let’s go to a verse in Malachi (4:2), the last prophet in the Old Testament, and
sketch five images of the coming of Jesus Christ.
If they saw the coming of Jesus the way the prophets saw it, they would see its
relevance for their lives, and they wouldn't be indifferent anymore.

16. Malachi's Great Expectation of the Coming Lord in chapter 4, verse 2.
Here is a prophet writing 450 years before Jesus but full of expectation that the
Messiah is coming.
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In 3:1 he says, "The Lord Whom you seek will suddenly come to His temple; the
Messenger of the covenant in Whom you delight; behold He is coming says the
Lord of hosts." And in verse 3:2, "He is like fuller’s soap and a refiner's fire."
This same great expectation in 3:1 is described in 4:2, and this is the verse we
want to unfold this morning.
• Malachi has just warned that those who proudly resist God will be
consumed with fire on the coming Day of Judgment.
Judgment Day
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But then Malachi has a different word to say to those who fear the Lord.
For them (us) the future holds something vastly more wonderful.

17. http://media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/736x/d7/84/cc/d784cc1039be5d97365f8262eeb4dccf.jpg
Malachi 4:2 NKJV
2 But to you who fear My name
The Sun of Righteousness shall arise
With healing in His wings;
And you shall go out (leaping)
And grow fat like stall-fed calves.
http://reversingverses.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/mal4-2.jpg?w=551&h=351
When John the Baptist's father prophesied in Luke 1:78, he alluded to this verse
and said that with the coming of Jesus the day was dawning from on high.
The Sun of Righteousness was rising.

18. Luke 1:78 NASB
78 Because of the tender mercy of our God,
With which the Sunrise from on high will visit us
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And Jesus has been rising all over this world ever since.
• One day His rise will reach its noonday brightness and He will appear in
glory and the final division between the unbelieving and the believing will
be made.

19. Five Pictures of What the Coming of Jesus Means -
• But for those who fear the Lord—who wake up from their indifference or
rebellion against Him and honor Him with trust and allegiance—what does
the coming of the Lord mean?
What does it mean for you today if you are a true Biblical Christian?
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20. Five pictures from Malachi 4:2;
1. A rising sun
2. Beams of righteousness
3. Wings of healing
4. Breaking out of a stall
5. Leaping like calves
The Rising Sun is a picture of Christ
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1. A Rising Sun
Jesus Christ is a rising sun.
That means at least four things.
We'll mention only two (omitting: warmth where there was cold, and
growth where there was atrophy).
Light Where There Was Darkness
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Jesus brings light where there was darkness and when you have light, you can
see - Jesus helps us see things like they really are.
He makes sense out of things.

21. Jesus said to Pilate, "For this I was born, and for this I have come into the world,
to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice." And
Pilate mocked Him and said, as though he lived in the 21st century, "What is
truth?"
That is the tragic and cynical cry of our age: What is truth?
Not because there's a passion for truth, but because there is so much skepticism
that any such thing exists.
The effect of this skepticism and relativism is moral, intellectual, personal and
family bankruptcy.
• Why do many families come apart? Because they have no anchor of
truth. The husband and father has no clear vision of why he or his children
exist.
All he can do is pass on a few tips for how to make more money or stay healthy.
And the emptiness gets deeper and deeper with each unbelieving generation.
But Jesus is the light of the world and He brings sense and meaning out of
absurdity.
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22. Security Where There Was Danger
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The second thing implied by His being a rising sun is that He brings security
where there was danger. When it is dark, there is more danger because you
can't see the path in front of you.
You might fall off a cliff or trip over a log or bang your head against a limb.
When the sun finally rises, you can move with security and that's the way it is with
Jesus. He points the way to go again and again. (John 14:6-7)
John 14:6-7 NKJV
6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the
Father except through Me.
7 If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; and from now on
you know Him and have seen Him.”
He shows up the danger and the foolishness of many choices before we make
them.
He guards us from many evil forces that only have power in the dark.
So when Jesus comes into the world, He comes as a sun: He is light in the
darkness of confusion and ignorance and skepticism.
• He gives a fixed point of truth in a world where every standard seems to
have come unglued.

23. And in doing this, He guards us from destroying our lives and keeps us safe.
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Dxrosz-BlJs/T6t0zpRQhyI/AAAAAAAAAJ4/YaOae70Ug90/s1600/No+Fear.jpg
Five pictures from Malachi 4:2;
1. A rising sun
2. Beams of righteousness
3. Wings of healing
4. Breaking out of a stall
5. Leaping like calves
Beams of Righteousness
http://bibledaily.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/sun-beam.jpg
2. Beams of Righteousness
The sun is a sun with beams of righteousness. Which means that Jesus
makes things right. He makes man right with God through reconciliation.
He also makes man right with man through grace and humility and patience
and love. In the end, He will make right all the wrongs that His people have
suffered, so that we don't have to carry the burden of revenge and indignation.
If you look at the incredible injustices in the world today, and see people
suffering when they seem innocent and prospering when they seem wicked,
Jesus gives an answer: where He is trusted, He can reconcile and restore; where
He's not, He will have the last word in the judgment.

24. http://nowtheendbegins.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/great-white-throne-judgment-book-of-revelation-
chapter-20.jpg
Five pictures from Malachi 4:2;
1. A rising sun
2. Beams of righteousness
3. Wings of healing
4. Breaking out of a stall
5. Leaping like calves
Wings of Healing
http://jimbecton.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/cropped-10397050_1535537956666098_3690048403948597878_o.jpg
3. Wings of Healing
This Sun of Righteousness rises with healing in its wings.
Can you remember a spectacular sunrise that you experienced?
Early one morning you saw how it happens on the rim of the ocean.
A thin line of orange and red appears along the water. Then it intensifies, brighter
and brighter, and you see the brightness focusing more and more on the center
of the line, until the flaming ball surges up out of the water.

25. http://defwalls.com/wallpapers-n/water-sunrise-clouds-_732-4.jpg
And then you watch it rise up, and in a sense it brings that whole red line on the
rim of the water up into the air as though the sun had wings.
http://heidiviars.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/beautiful-sunrise-fox-deer-march-2014-013.jpg
When Malachi saw that, God told him: the coming of the Messiah will be like that
and the effect of His beauty will be healing. Jesus is a great Healer. Though
Jesus does not heal every disease in this life, He will heal every disease in the
resurrection.
In other words Jesus meets the tremendous need we all feel for hope beyond
the grave—that all sickness and pain and sorrow and crying will be gone
forever. (Revelation 21:4)
Revelation 21:4 NKJV
4 And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more
death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things
have passed away.

26. Healing (marpe’, "restoration or health") in its wings (or rays) in Malachi 4:2 refers
to the restorative powers of righteousness, which are like the healthful rays of the
sun.
• God's people will be spiritually restored and renewed.
http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/66/f3/a3/66f3a3cd9483c9f23bc0c3738d585a2c.jpg
Five pictures from Malachi 4:2;
1. A rising sun
2. Beams of righteousness
3. Wings of healing
4. Breaking out of a stall
5. Leaping like calves
Breaking Out of a Stall
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-1NG-S4TfdLc/TXFnW4Rb0EI/AAAAAAAAAMk/UlqD891TUb8/s1600/DSC_0201.JPG

27. 4. Breaking Out of a Stall
One effect of all this for those who fear the Lord will be a going forth from
the stall — "You shall go forth from the stall."
The coming of Jesus means freedom not bondage and we don't want to
minimize that deep longing in our hearts for freedom.
http://dennisgable.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/freedom_quote_31.jpg
Freedom in Christ is essential to all joy – which Jesus promises to give us.
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Until He comes, we are all in a real sense trapped and bound in the stall.
We will never know the freedom for which we were made as long as we are in
the stall—until Jesus sets us free at the Rapture!
Five pictures from Malachi 4:2;
1. A rising sun
2. Beams of righteousness
3. Wings of healing
4. Breaking out of a stall
5. Leaping like calves

28. Leaping Like Calves
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5. Leaping Like Calves
When the Sun of Righteousness rises with healing in His wings and we are
set free from the stall of bondage, we will not merely walk, or run; we will
leap like calves.
In other words freedom is the necessary condition of leaping joy. Jesus said in
Luke 6:22–23, "Blessed are you when men hate you. ... Rejoice in that day, and
leap for joy, for behold your reward is great in Heaven."
The figure of calves enjoying open pasture after being cooped up in a stall
expresses the future satisfaction and joy of the righteous.
http://wunderground.com/data/wximagenew/h/HOLLY/251.jpg
You may think that some people you know don’t have the personality for this
and that they could no more leap like a calf than speak Russian.
But we do not know each other very well.
John Piper remembers once in seminary going out with people from the adult
Sunday School that he was teaching. They came out of the pizza place and he
commenced to demonstrate the high step of a drum major in the Greenville,
S.C., Christmas parade.

29. Well the mouths of those folks fell open. And they stared in disbelief. They didn't
know he had a calf in him.
• There is a calf in every believer and given the right setting, it will leap.
We would do well to give it some room, otherwise we will look very out of
character in Heaven when Jesus takes us running through the fields.
http://becomingellipsismark.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/man20leaping20cropped.jpg
The True Meaning of Being a Christian
Jesus comes -
 to give light and truth where there was darkness and confusion,
 to set things right where they were wrong,
 to give healing where there was sickness and brokenness,
 to give freedom where there was bondage, and
 to give calf-like joy where there was dreariness and fear.
Father, I pray that none would be able to resist the offer of Your grace in these
words. Let every family be united in the faith this year. May those who have
been spectators stop holding back, and join the drama of redemption. And may
even this morning the Sun of Righteousness rise with healing in His wings so that
all of us might go forth leaping like calves from the stall.
In Jesus' name.
Amen.
Full author John Piper
John Piper (@JohnPiper) is founder and teacher of desiringGod.org and
chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary. For 33 years, he served as pastor
of Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota.
He is author of more than 50 books.
© 2015 Desiring God Foundation. Distribution GuidelinesL

30. The Plan of Hope & Salvation
John 3:16 NKJV
16 “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever
believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”
John 14:6 NKJV
6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the
Father except through Me.”
Romans 3:23 NKJV
23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
Romans 6:23a NKJV
23a For the wages of sin is death,
 Death in this life (the first death) is 100%.
 Even Jesus, the only one who doesn’t deserve death, died in this life to
pay the penalty for our sins.
 The death referred to in Romans 6:23a is the second death explained in
Revelation 21:8.
Revelation 21:8 NKJV
8 “But the cowardly, unbelieving, abominable, murderers, sexually immoral,
sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars shall have their part in the lake which burns with
fire and brimstone, which is the second death.”
Romans 5:8 NKJV
8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners,
Christ died for us.
Romans 6:23b NKJV
23b but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Revelation 21:7 NKJV
7 “He who overcomes shall inherit all things, and I will be his God and he shall be
My son.”
 Romans 10:9-10 explains to us how to accept Jesus as our Savior.

31. Romans 10:9-10 NKJV
9 that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that
God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For with the heart one
believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto
salvation.
Romans 10:13 NKJV
13 For “whoever calls on the name of the LORD shall be saved.”
If you have questions or would like to know more, Please, contact First Baptist
Church Jackson at 601-949-1900 or http://firstbaptistjackson.org/contact/