Joseph Prince - Knowing God's Love Changes Everything (01/27/2026)
What an amazing God we serve—He spared not His own beloved Son but gave Him up for us sinners on the cross as the ultimate sacrifice, proving His immense love. Through Jesus' finished work, we are fully forgiven, accepted in the Beloved, positioned at God's right hand, and invited to receive all things freely from His abundant grace, rising to see ourselves as God sees us in Christ.
God's Ultimate Gift – Sparing Not His Own Son
What a God we serve! What a God we have! A God who gave us His Son. He spared not His own Son, but gave Him up for us all. What kind of us all that He gave up His Son for? People that are perfect, people that please Him all the time, people that obey Him, people that are filled with praises in their mouth for Him. No, people who are guilty, people who are rebellious, people who blaspheme Him.
He gave up His Son, He gave up His Son, the Son that He loved for us all. Amen? God sent His Son. For what purpose? For His Son to rule over man like a king? No. He sent His Son so that His Son will become the sacrifice for our sins on that cross. So while... and then what we did with God's Son, it's like God, you know, God is telling us, this is how much I love you. I give you my best. I'm not giving you Michael. I'm not giving you Gabriel. I'm giving you the very best. Not even one of the angels. I'm giving you the very best. The Son that I love.
You are loved. Jesus look at you and He says this, even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. That is very personal detail. I don't care how much a mother loves her baby. Alright? Even the baby has very little fuzzy hair. You know, that light hair. I've never seen a mother count one by one. Never. Never. But God knows the very hairs of your head. He cares for every detail in your life.
You say, how can God do that? And there are, you know, there's so many people in the world, how can God give personal attention? That's why He's God and you are not. You know, when you come to God, you come to His throne of grace, you never see Pastor Gabriel there. Have you? Never. It's as if we come to God, we have a very personal audience. And God can do that for every one of us. And more. Amen?
Accepted in the Beloved – How God Sees Us in Christ
And that's why when God gave up His Son, He spared not His own Son. You think about it. The quality, the value, the estimation that God has of Jesus Christ. If you know the value of that one man who so pleased the Father, even in his earthly life, that the Father opened the heavens, the Bible says, and I love the way the Greek says, He opened the heavens to Him. God had to open the heavens. And God said, you are my beloved Son. In you, I am well pleased. Amen?
And that position that He has with the Father, He gave it to you. Because we are all in Christ. And the Bible says in Ephesians 1, we are all beloved. Highly favoured. And we are also accepted in the Beloved. You could have said, we are accepted in Christ. But God wants us to feel more the warmth of that verse so it doesn't become clinical. God says, you are accepted in the Beloved. When I say you are my beloved Son to Jesus, now you are accepted in the Beloved. Hallelujah! Amen!
And the way God treats Jesus is how He will treat you. See, our flesh can't take all that, is it? It's too much for us. And that's why, I'll tell you this, a lot of people, I still feel that even Christians in the Evangelical circles, you know, in the Evangelical circle, we have a lot of people who feel like they understand forgiveness. But the moment they think that forgiveness is basic teaching, I know they don't understand it. Because it's at the heart of God. It's the main truth.
God is holy, it's the truth. Amen! God is holy, God is just, it's the truth. Amen! God is a judge. Amen! It's true! But God is love. It's the essence of who He is. Amen! So remember this, peace to your conscience comes by looking at the nail prints of His hands, knowing it's a finished work. All your sins have been borne away. Amen! It was an efficacious work. Because the same body on the cross that knew no sin, but took all our sins in His body, on the third day rose from the dead, without our sins.
The Finished Work – Jesus Sat Down Having Purged Our Sins
And He didn't die for Himself, He died for us. He had no sins to die for. He died for our sins. Therefore, He rose again for us. To show us where I am today, at the Father's right hand, that's where you are. Amen! And the Bible says in Hebrews 1, having purged our sins, He sat down on the right hand of the majesty on high. He did not sit down as the Son of God, that He always is. He did not sit down because of the majesty of His glory. No, He sat down, having purged our sins.
If that was not a complete work, He cannot sit down. By virtue of the fact He sat down, God is saying, all your sins, past, present, and future, there's no time to it. It's all purged. And that's why Jesus sat down. See, you're sitting down, and I'm standing. Why? Because my work is not finished. I'm still preaching. A few of you might wish, it's finished, and I sit down. Right? But it's not finished yet. It'll be finished in about two, three hours. But, I'm here until it is finished. Right?
You are sitting down. Why? You're not doing any work. The Bible says, He sat down. Why? The work is finished. The work is finished. And that's why we worship the Lord on the Lord's Day as a church. Because the Lord's Day is the day that He rose from the dead. It's the day of redemption.
Once upon a time, God gave the Sabbath on Saturday for man to rest. That's God's rest in creation. But what happened was that we read, man fell. When man fell, like Jesus says, on the Sabbath, why He healed the blind man on the Sabbath, or He healed the impotent man, He says that, My Father is working on the Sabbath, and I work. As long as man cannot rest, as long as man is still afflicted, my Father and I cannot rest.
So, there was another rest. Because God's rest in creation was marked. It was tarnished because of man's fall. So, God started working again and God sent His Son and His Son started working. How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power who went about doing good and healing all that were oppressed of the devil. He did good. He went about doing good. Healing is doing good. Amen.
Until He cried on the cross. It is finished! His first ministerial word at the age of 12. My son is 12 years old. At the age of 12, when the earthly parents came to Him and they said, you know, we have been looking for you. How did you not know, He said, that I must be about my Father's business. There's the first recorded words of our Lord Jesus. Age of 12. On the cross, His last words. It is finished. What is finished? My Father's business. Of restoring man, healing man. Amen.
God finally found His rest in redemption. No more in creation. In redemption. That's why Sabbath on Saturday is creation. The Lord's Day on Sunday is redemption. Do you understand that, church? Can you understand that? Amen? So let's not argue about that anymore. Amen. Anyway, it is not an observance of a day. But I think something special about the Lord's Day. Something special. Why? When Jesus appeared to His disciples, look at the Gospels. He appeared from Sunday to Sunday. After He rose from the dead, He appeared to them from Sunday to Sunday. Amen.
Jesus Revealed in Scripture – The Emmaus Road Encounter
And then, on the same day that He rose from the dead we saw last time that I shared with you, He was walking with two of them on the Emmaus Road. And He hid from their eyes, not that He hid with His hands, okay, but the Bible says through His power, He restrained their eyes from seeing who He was in His resurrected form. Why? Because He wanted them to see Him in the Scriptures. They were discouraged. They were downcast. Amen. They were dismayed.
But Jesus brought them out of their discouragement, out of their self-obsession, out of their misery. How? Beginning at Moses, the first five books of the Bible. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. Beginning at Moses, He began to expound in them the things concerning Himself. He taught us that on every Sunday, we are to expound things concerning Himself. Not politics, not nature, science, and things like that, but Himself.
The Bible says He is the most beautiful of 10,000. The expression in Song of Songs. I really believe that. This baby is the most beautiful baby born ever. Alright? And He grew up, He was definitely good looking. Amen? And years and years of working, 30 years in the carpenter workshop will give Him muscles. Amen? Amen? He looks good. He's a man's man. Assert. He's a man's man. Don't be afraid to be a man in these days, in this age. Amen? Amen? Jesus was a man's man.
And He looked really good. Because why? There's no sin in His blood. We are all born in sin. Can you imagine what that does to His look? But pastor, there's a verse that says there's no beauty in Him we should desire of Him. Yeah, but that verse appears where? In Isaiah 53. And it talks about His sufferings for us on the cross. He was wounded for our transgressions. When we behold Him, there was no beauty in Him. You know, He looked so terrible because the Bible says He was so... Listen to this phrase also from Isaiah 52 and 53 talking about His work at the cross. It says that His figure was so marred beyond that of any man. This altogether lovely one was so marred beyond that of any man.
He becomes so hideous. The 39 stripes or maybe even more. The Bible doesn't say how many. And the Bible says bones stare at Him. He was so lacerated. Amen. So lacerated that His back is one big hole. How do I know that? Because in the expression of the Greek, by His stripes we are healed in 1 Peter 2:24. It's a singular stripe that is used. Either singular, one stripe, but we know He was being scourged by the Romans. You know? And if not singular, then it is an expression used for so many stripes, there is not even a sliver of skin left that the word singular stripe is used. That is how bad it was.
That is why He cannot carry His cross all the way to Calvary. He fell. They had someone help Him, right? Simon the Cyrenian, remember? Because His back was lacerated. Bones were exposed. So even the movies that you watch don't even come close. He was so marred beyond that of any man, the Bible says. He gave up His beauty so that you will receive the beauty of the Lord our God. The psalmist says, let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us. Amen? His glory, His peace, His moral perfections.
The Compassionate Jesus – Miracles Without Strings Attached
So that is where He appears. There is no beauty in Him when you see Him. But don't take that verse as if it has dropped His entire life. No. And He is a man's man because when He looks at fishermen, you know fishermen? You know how they talk? Those are rough fishermen. Peter and his gang. Right? They are rough. They spit on the floor. They spit everywhere. Alright? You can hear, when you pass by, you hear, you know, very clear. Amen? They are not exactly the people in the palaces of Herod that are educated and you know, they are just, they are just rough men.
And Jesus passed by them. They never know who this person is. He looked at them and only spoke two words. Follow me. And those rough fishermen, alright, left everything and they followed Him. They left everything and followed Him. What charisma, what attractiveness, what drew them to Him. I want to see this Jesus. Song of Songs says, His whole demeanor is like the cedars of Lebanon, like Lebanon, that stately cedar tree. So when I read the Gospels, that's how I see Jesus. Amen?
I love it. He came to a place called Nain in Hebrew. And then, there's a crowd following Jesus and then Jesus on the same path met another crowd. It was the woman who had lost her son, her only son and she's a widow. Means no more husband, no more sons. She's all by herself. And in those days, that's like a death knell because no one to support you. And she was crying. Her young son was very young. A young man, the Bible says. And he passed by. So death and life met. There was a collision of life and death. And life won.
Jesus stopped the stretcher and Jesus says, don't cry. Just two words. Don't cry. Amen? Then he took the man by the hand. Young man. You know, just one word. Arise. The guy rose. The guy got up and he handed him back to his mother. And what did he do? Did he say, young man, from now on, you're going to give your whole life to me. Do you understand? No. He gave him back, read carefully, he gave him back to his mom. And he went on walking. He never took favours of people that he healed.
Those he asked to follow, right, they were mending their nets, he asked them to follow. They were busy collecting taxes, follow. He never healed and then said, follow. In other words, he never put a price tag on his acts of grace. Just healed. Can you imagine the, if you make a movie, no one makes movies like this. Heal. Right. The guy got up, raised from the dead, giving back to his mother. I believe there's a smile on his beautiful face. And then, he walked on. Life kept on marching to find death, to invade it and overwhelm it with his life. Everywhere he went, just so cool. Got up. The guy got up. Jesus walked away. I love it.
Peace in the Storm – Jesus' Calm Authority
Just like he was sleeping in the storm. Right? Imagine them. These are experienced fishermen in the midst of the Sea of Galilee and the storm arose. And there's no small storm, you know. I mean, these are very high walls of water about to crash. And there's one man who was so cool, he was sleeping. I'm sure that he, water was splashing all over, but he was sleeping. Such a peace. The peace that in the upper room, he says, peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. Wow. That peace.
And the storm didn't wake him up. It was the cry of his disciples. Just like during a storm. Alright? The mother is sleeping so soundly. She's so tired with a young newborn baby. But the moment the baby squeaked, she's awake. The storm did not wake her. The squeak of her loved one woke her. The storm didn't wake Jesus. It was a cry of the disciples. Don't you care? Don't you? We always say that to God. Don't you care? Right?
He got up. You read carefully, right? He's been working, healing, healing, transforming, blessing, casting out demons, doing good. He deserved that rest. By the way, Jesus takes naps. Yeah? So, he's a well-deserved rest. When he got up, just one word. He looked at the storm and he says, silence or be still. And the Bible says, all the waves all kowtow to him. And the Bible used the word in the Greek. There was a mega calm. Mega calm. Great calm.
And then he turned around. There's one more storm, more important storm to still in the hearts of all his disciples. And it's, why are you so fearful? Where is your faith? Their faith should be in him. As long as he's in the boat, you cannot sink. He's in your life, you cannot go down. Amen. Amen. Are you blessed? This is the Lord Jesus that we serve. This is the Son that the Father gave.
How Much More Will God Give Us All Things?
And I'll tell you this, if God spared not His own Son, the Son that He loved, for you, how much more, let that word really encourage and spark your faith, ignite your faith, how much more will God with Christ give you all things? If God spared not His own Son, the very best heaven has, God did not spare. God did not spare the Son that He loved for you. God did not spare it because He loved you. And if God did not spare the best, how will He not with Him also give you all things?
And here we are with our little faith, little revelation of God's goodness. No, friend. Let's rise higher. Amen? Let's come to the level of how God sees us. God is so abundant. He wants to always be giving. Always taking the blessed part of giving. And our part must always, with God, it's always more blessed to receive than to give. With men, it is always more blessed to give than to receive. You got it? Okay?
So always understand, every day when you come for quiet time, it's not just a routine, a law that you keep. It's to receive. Because every day you need fresh supply. And He's standing ready with all His glory, all His power, with all His kindness and mercies and goodness to lavish upon you. I'll tell you this. God loves it so much. If people don't want to receive from Him, sometimes I say, God, if people don't want, just give it to me. Give me the extras. Here's a receptacle. Amen? Ready to receive. Amen? May you also be one of them. Praise the Lord.