Jesus Christ the Savior
What is the Gospel? • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Transcript
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:
What have you been reading in your Bible? What has been challenging to you? How has the Bible been seeking to change you?
What are some reasons you don’t share the gospel with your friends, teammates, coworkers, relatives, etc.? (ask the teens for specific people’s names we can pray for them as they seek to share the gospel)
What is the good news of the gospel? Better said, who is the good news of the gospel? What makes him good news?
Why does or should the gospel matter to you right now?
When you sin, do you tend to hide, excuse it, or run to Jesus? Why do you think that is?
How does the Gospel challenge the way teens often define themselves (grades, popularity, sports, image, performance)?
SMALL GROUP PRAYER PROMPTS
SMALL GROUP PRAYER PROMPTS
Pray that God would give us hunger for His Word and soften our hearts to be changed by what we read and not just informed by it.
Confess fears, insecurities, or distractions that keep us from sharing Jesus, and ask God to replace fear with love for people. Pray for specific people in our lives who don’t know Jesus, asking God for open doors and faithful hearts.
Thank God that the gospel is not just a message but a person, Jesus, and ask that we would treasure Him more deeply.
LESSON
LESSON
Have you ever had someone say to you… “I’ve got good new and some bad news. Which one do you want first?”
The Gospel doesn’t give us an option to which we want to hear first. If you’re like me, you don’t want to hear bad news. Let’s skip the bad news and get straight to the good news.
The Gospel doesn’t work that way. If there wasn’t any bad news, there wouldn’t be any good news.
As review, we’re learning how to answer the question — What is the Gospel? And we’ve broken down into four parts, four easy to remember words. Does anyone remember the first word? GOD the Righteous Creator.
*ask someone to give a synopsis of this / finish what they started.
So the Gospel begins with God who righteously rules and judges in his holiness, and everything belongs to him for he created all things. Not good news and not necessarily bad news.
Does anyone remember the second word? MAN the sinner.
*ask someone to give a synopsis of this / finish what they started.
This is the bad news. We stand squarely fixed under the judgment of a holy God because of our sin. You, me, everyone in the entire world.
If we left the explanation of the Gospel here we’d be hopeless.
But… the bad news of human sin and God’s judgment is not the end of the story. You are a sinner destined to be condemned. But God has acted to save sinners just like you through Jesus Christ the Savior.
Turn to Mark 1.
1 The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God;
The book of Mark begins by recognizing the good news of the coming of Jesus Christ to a world destroyed and dead at the feet of sin.
Remember back to Genesis 3. We saw it a couple of weeks ago.
15 And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.
From the very third chapter of the Bible, creation and all of humanity had anxiously been awaiting the one who would crush the serpent’s head. The was the germination or the beginning of the good news.
The rest of the Bible works it’s way through the detailed story of humanity eagerly awaiting the completion/finality of this good news. For thousands of years, God prepared the world through law and prophecy for his stunning destruction of the Serpent in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
When it was all over, the guilt Adam (Romans 5:12) inflicted on his entire race would be defeated, the death God pronounced over his own creation would die, and hell would be brought to its knees. The Bible is the story of God’s counteroffensive against sin. The Bible is the grand narrative of how God made it right, how he is making it right, and how he will one day make it right finally and forever.
Application: If the Bible is the big story of God making things right, then your life isn’t random or pointless—it’s part of something bigger. When school is stressful, friendships fall apart, or you mess up, Scripture reminds you that brokenness isn’t the end of the story. God is actively working to restore what sin has wrecked—including you.
This means you don’t have to define yourself by your worst moment, your anxiety, your doubts, or what other people say about you. The Bible shows you where you came from, why the world feels broken, what God is doing right now, and where everything is headed. It gives you hope to keep fighting sin, courage to obey God when it’s hard, and confidence that following Jesus actually matters—because God is writing a story that ends in restoration, not chaos.
But why Jesus? Why was Jesus the only one who could be humanity’s Savior? Anyone know? Who is Jesus?
Quite simply — Jesus is the only one worthy to be our Savior because he is both completely human and completely God. Only the fully human, fully divine Son of God who can save us.
If Jesus were just another man he would no more be able to save us than one dead man can save another. But because he is the Son of God, without sin and equal in every divine perfection to God the Father, he is able to defeat death and save us from our sin.
So Jesus came and preached a message…
14 Now after that John was put in prison, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, 15 And saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel.
For centuries, God had foretold a time when he would once and for all put an end to the world’s evil and rescue his people from their sin. He would sweep away all resistance and establish his rule, his “kingdom,” over all the earth. Even more, God had promised that he would establish his kingdom in the person of a messianic King, one in the royal line of the great King David.
Turn to Isaiah 9.
6 For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: And the government shall be upon his shoulder: And his name shall be called Wonderful, Counseller, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. 7 Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, Upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, To order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice From henceforth even for ever. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this.
Jesus was the long-awaited Messiah, the long-awaited king. The gospel writers even recognize this about Jesus when Luke records the words of the angel announcing Jesus’ birth to Mary:
32 He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David: 33 And he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end.
The New Testament tells the story of how King Jesus inaugurated the rule of God on earth and began rolling back the curse of sin. But this kingdom looked unlike anything the Jews had imagined.
They wanted a messiah who would establish an earthly, political kingdom that would overthrow and supplant the Roman Empire, the ruling power of the day. Yet Jesus merely preached, taught, healed, forgived, and raised the dead.
But as Revelation will show us on Sunday nights… His kingdom will one day become earthly.
62 And Jesus said, I am: and ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.
And this is all good news! Well only to those who can get in on it. And this leads us back to our problem — our sin… Unless something happens to remove the guilt of our disobedience and rebellion against God, we are still separated from him and destined not for the joys of heaven and new earth, but for the eternal punishment of hell.
But here’s where the good news of Christianity gets really, really good. King Jesus came not only to inaugurate the kingdom of God, but also to bring sinners into it by dying in their place for their sin, taking their punishment on himself and securing forgiveness for them, making them righteous in God’s sight, and qualifying them to share in the inheritance of the kingdom.
Application: This means Christianity isn’t about trying harder to be a better person or proving you’re “good enough” for God. Jesus didn’t come just to talk about God’s kingdom—He made a way for you to actually belong in it. When you feel guilty over sin, ashamed of past choices, or like you never measure up, this reminds you that Jesus already took the punishment you deserve. You don’t have to carry that weight anymore.
Because Jesus makes you righteous in God’s sight, your identity isn’t based on your grades, popularity, mistakes, or spiritual performance. You obey God not to earn His love, but because you already have it. And knowing you’re forgiven gives you the freedom to be honest about your sin, to repent instead of hiding, and to grow instead of giving up.
This also gives your life direction and hope. You’re not just trying to survive high school—you’re part of God’s kingdom, with a future inheritance that’s secure. That changes how you fight sin, how you treat others, and how you live every day, because your place with God is settled through Jesus.
Look at the verse on the screen:
29 The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.
What does John mean by Lamb? What does John mean by taking away the sin?
*highlight the Passover feast and Egypt.
The followers of Jesus realized that his mission was not just to inaugurate the kingdom of God, but to do so by dying as a substitutionary sacrifice for his people. Jesus was not just King, they realized. He was a suffering King.
Turn to Isaiah 53.
1 Who hath believed our report? And to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed? 2 For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, And as a root out of a dry ground: He hath no form nor comeliness; And when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. 3 He is despised and rejected of men; A man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: And we hid as it were our faces from him; He was despised, and we esteemed him not. 4 Surely he hath borne our griefs, And carried our sorrows: Yet we did esteem him stricken, Smitten of God, and afflicted. 5 But he was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities: The chastisement of our peace was upon him; And with his stripes we are healed. 6 All we like sheep have gone astray; We have turned every one to his own way; And the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. 7 He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, Yet he opened not his mouth: He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, And as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, So he openeth not his mouth.
Out of love for his people Jesus willingly laid down his life, the Lamb of God was slain so his people could be forgiven.
Listen to these verses:
13 Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree: 14 That the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ; that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.
21 For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.
18 For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit:
24 Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed.
When Jesus died, it was not the punishment for his own sins that he endured. (He didn’t have any!) It was the punishment for his people’s sins! As he hung on the cross at Calvary, Jesus bore all the horrible weight of the sin of God’s people. All their rebellion, all their disobedience, all their sin fell on his shoulders. And the curse that God had pronounced in Eden — the sentence of death — struck.
That is why Jesus cried out in agony, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” God his Father, who is holy and righteous, whose eyes are too pure even to look on evil, looked at his Son, saw the sins of his Son’s people resting on his shoulders, turned away in disgust, and poured out his wrath on his own Son.
Do you see, do you feel the significance of this? Ultimately, it means that I’m the one who should have died, not Jesus. I should have been punished, not he. And yet he took my place. He died for me.
His death, my life.
Here’s the good news — A righteous and holy God can justify the ungodly because in Jesus’ death, mercy and justice were perfectly reconciled. The curse was righteously executed, and we were mercifully saved.
Application: This means your sin is more serious than you probably like to admit—but God’s love for you is far greater than you could imagine. Jesus didn’t die because things got out of control or because He messed up. He chose to take your place. That means when you lie, give in to temptation, rebel against authority, or walk away from God, the punishment you deserved didn’t just disappear—it was taken by Jesus.
That changes how you see yourself. You don’t get to pretend sin is no big deal, but you also don’t have to drown in guilt or shame. When you feel unworthy, spiritually fake, or tired of failing the same way again, this truth reminds you that Jesus already paid for that sin. You don’t have to earn forgiveness or punish yourself—repentance is possible because justice has already been satisfied.
This also changes how you live. If Jesus really took your place, then your life isn’t your own anymore. Obedience isn’t about rules; it’s a response of gratitude. You fight sin not because you’re afraid of being rejected, but because you’re already loved. You can be honest about your struggles, quick to confess, and motivated to grow—because His death means your life.
But this all ultimately hinges on the fact that the crucified Jesus is no longer dead!
If Christ had remained dead like any other “savior” or “teacher” or “prophet,” his death would have meant nothing more than yours or mine.
33 Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth. 34 Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.
But this leaves us with the question, who can claim Jesus as their Savior? (which we’ll answer next week)
Imagine you get a notification that there’s an official letter waiting for you. You already know it’s bad. Maybe it’s from the school office, the court, or somewhere that only sends letters when something’s wrong. You don’t want to open it—so you ignore it. You shove it in your backpack, then in a drawer, and you try not to think about it.
But the letter doesn’t stop being true just because you won’t read it.
That’s the Gospel.
The bad news comes first whether we like it or not. God is righteous. We are sinners. We stand guilty. Ignoring that doesn’t make it go away.
But imagine this: instead of punishment, the letter says everything has been paid in full. The charge is real. The guilt was real. The consequences were deserved—but someone else stepped in, took responsibility, and settled it completely. The case is closed. You’re free.
That’s why the good news is good.
The Bible is the story of God making things right. Jesus is the King who brought the kingdom. And the cross is where justice and mercy met—where the punishment we deserved fell on Him, so life could be given to us. His death, your life.
So the question isn’t whether the letter exists.
The question is whether you’ll open it, believe it, and live like it’s true.
Because if this Gospel is real, then your sin isn’t the end of your story, your life has purpose, your future is secure—and King Jesus is inviting you into His kingdom.
*pause to talk about preaching or spreading the gospel.
GROUP PRAYER PROMPTS
GROUP PRAYER PROMPTS
Thank Jesus for willingly taking our place and bearing the punishment we deserved.
Pray for humility to see sin clearly and gratitude to respond in obedience. Pray for courage to repent quickly and honestly when we sin this week.
Ask God to help us truly believe that our forgiveness is complete and secure in Christ. Pray for freedom from guilt, shame, or fear that keeps us from running to Jesus.
