God's Purpose For Us

Introduction

Greeting: Welcome everyone to Hype! For those who don’t know me my name is Kent and I am the youth and college pastor here at Crosspoint. We are glad that you are here tonight with us.

Raise your hand if you are done with all the COVID regulations and want things to go back to “normal”. Keep them raised if you wish the pandemic would just end and you wouldn’t have to worry about if you need to wear a mask or not. You can put your hands down now. What if I told you that I know how to get rid of COVID? What if I had access to a vaccine to end the current pandemic? You would want to know that right? You would want to get the vaccine for yourself and others around you so you wouldn’t have to worry about all the regulations and rules associated with a pandemic, right?

But let’s say that there would be students who are totally fine with all the regulations and rules about COVID and don’t want to get the vaccine or stop following COVID precautions for the rest of their lives. What are some words that you would use to describe those people? Crazy? Insane? Nuts? Irrational?

But what if I told that there is something more deadly that COVID that each and one of you have. Something that has a higher death rate than COVID and you have the vaccine or a way to overcome this deadly illness but the sad reality is that the majority of people in the world and even in this area of Central IL, will never accept the the treatment to get better from the deadly result of sin. Yes, sin has a way higher death rate than COVID and if you don’t believe me than all you have to do is go to the local cemetery and see all the grave stones that represent people who have died from the effects of sin. But we have a way to overcome sin, it’s called the gospel of Jesus Christ. Even though we may still physical die as a result of the original sin of Adam and Eve, we will spiritually have life as we spend eternity with God in heaven. Tonight we are starting a new teaching series titled, “What is the Gospel?” as we explore the meaning and significance of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Raise your hand if you have heard of the word, gospel. Raise your hand if you know what the word gospel means. (Ask a student if they know).

Answer: Good News.

Raise your hand if you have heard of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Raise your hand if you think you can explain what the gospel of Jesus Christ is.

Answer: The gospel of Jesus Christ is that Jesus, the Son of God, came to earth, lived a perfect and sinless life to be a sacrifice for our sins and then three days later Jesus arose from the dead. He did this so that all who believe in Jesus for Salvation will receive forgiveness for their sins and will have eternal life with God.

How long do you think it’d take to explain the gospel of Jesus Christ effectively to someone? What if I told you, it can be done in 5 min. Don’t believe me, watch this video.

Play video by Propaganda.

5 min. That’s all it took for him to clearly explain the gospel of Jesus Christ to someone. Over the next few weeks we will be exploring the the acronym Gospel as God. Our. Sin. Paying. Everyone. Life. Tonight we’ll explore the letters of G and O so God and Our.

God. Our. Sin. Paying. Everyone. Life.

God. Our.

The first thing to understand about the Gospel of Jesus Christ is who Jesus Christ is. Jesus is part of the Trinity that makes up God. God the Father, God the Son (who is Jesus), and the Holy Spirit. We can say that Jesus is part of the trinity which makes Him God. Now who is God? What do we know about God? We can start with that God is the creator of the universe. Gen. 1:1 says,

Christian Standard Bible Chapter 1

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

Now we read that with a small understanding of what that means. Let’s watch this next video to help us get a better understanding how awesome God is just based off the fact that He created the heavens and the earth.

Play video by Louie Giglio

Hopefully this helps in understanding just how big God is, how mighty God is, and how awesome God is. Something else we see about God in scripture is that God is holy, righteous, and perfect. There is no sin in God. We also know in scripture that God is all knowing, all powerful, and God is everywhere.

This awesome God decided to create humanity, this includes you and me and everyone who has ever lived on earth.

Gen. 1:26 talks about how God created us.

Christian Standard Bible Chapter 1

26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness. They will rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, the livestock, the whole earth, and the creatures that crawl on the earth.”

27 So God created man in his own image;

he created him in the image of God;

he created them male and female.

God made humans unique compared to other animals as we are the only ones made in the image of God. What does that phrase mean, “image of God”? It means that we have a spiritual component to our body. Just like God is spiritual so we too have a spirit. Other animals do not have a spirit, but we do. This spirit that is inside of us allows us to be in a relationship with our creator, our God, the Lord Almighty.

This means that you and me, as insignificant and small as we are compared to the big picture, are loved and desired by the creator of the entire universe and God wants to be in a relationship with you and me. This isn’t just some genie in the bottle relationship. God desires a loving, personal, intimate relationship with you. He wants you to talk to Him, spend time with Him, study and know more about Him. When we say a relationship, that is exactly what we mean. A personal relationship. But there is something that hinders our relationship with God and that something is sin. We’ll talk more about this next week. Please come back next week as we continue our talk about what is the gospel. But as we close tonight, I want you to reflect on this truth, that the God who created the entire universe loves you will you love God in return. God made you for the purpose of being in a relationship with Him. If you haven’t yet, will you enter into a relationship with God tonight.

Will you enter into a relationship with God tonight?

Close in prayer