How would I present the gospel to someone who’s never heard it before?
I usually think, God, man, Christ, response.
God, there is a God who created this world. He created everything. He’s absolutely perfect. He’s holy. And it’s hard for us to even fathom how holy He is.
If we think back in our past, in the last few minutes, we could probably think of thoughts that weren’t great or actions and weren’t great. You can go back a day and God never did anything that’s not absolutely perfect. Absolutely perfect. Pure righteousness. You can go back a year, go back a billion years, God is light and in Him there is no darkness.
This God created man. We have been created by God, made in the image of God. God loves us, made us to be like him. But we sinned against Him and that means that we have this break in our relationship with God.
I would never be like, “hey, all the sinners in the room, get on this side. All the non-sinners, get over there. Because we would always be on the sinner side of the room.” All of us of have sinned against God. And so it means we separate from him. And it also means just like if you commit a crime in the United States, there is judgment. There’s a penalty. There is a penalty for sin. It’s separation from God for an eternity.
The amazing good news is the Jesus Christ, the Son of God came to earth.
So this is the amazing thing about what God has done in His life. When people have conflict, we’re usually like, “well, you let me know when you want to talk about it.” Here’s what God did. God said, “you know what? I’m going to put on human flesh and become a man.”
So God, the Son, the Son of God became a man.
And then he lived the perfect life. Jesus never disobeyed his parents. He never talked to somebody crazy. Jesus never looked upon them with lust. And then Jesus was killed.
So the punishment we deserve for our sin — the wages of sin is death — Jesus took that for us.
It’s almost like we are in the courtroom. We’ve been sentenced to the death penalty. Jesus says, “I’ll take that for them.” And at the same time, he’s like, “and all the things I’ve earned with my absolute perfect life, you can have that. I’ll take what you deserve.”
So Jesus dies on the cross, resurrect from the grave, and when he gets up from the grave, he defeats our enemies that we cannot defeat.
We cannot defeat death. Jesus defeats death.
We cannot defeat sin, Jesus defeats sin for us.
We cannot defeat evil. Jesus defeats evil for us.
How we’re supposed to respond is in faith.
God hasn’t said, “Hey, you need to do all of these things, and then I’ll think about letting you in to my family.”
He said, “what you need to do is acknowledge you a sinner and you need me.”
It’s like a lifeguard jumping in to save someone who’s drowning this life. You already had your chance to swim. You failed, right? What you can do at this point is stop kicking your legs, grab a hold of me, and I’ll swim you to shore.
God said put your faith in the Son of God, that he is a Son of God, He is holy, He died and resurrected, and I’ll give you new life, forgiveness of sins and eternal life.
#HopeOnDemand