The Gospel in Context [Class Summary]
The whole point of last week's homework assignment is to get your kids to think about the full context of the gospel of Jesus Christ. I had a hard time coming up with a prompt that was sufficiently clear as to point them in the right direction, but that was not so obvious as to eliminate the need for any thought. Fortunately, though, God saw to it to bless me with a really sharp group of students and quite a few of you got it. One student actually did such a good job on the homework that if I didn't know better, I'd think that what was turned in were the notes taken during class. It's such an encouragement to see the fruit of your labors as parents in teaching your kids the fundamentals of the faith. Oddly enough, it's very satisfying to realize that my presence in that classroom every Sunday morning is largely unnecessary; I'm not really teaching anything new, but rather reminding my young brothers and sisters in Christ what they already know (Philippians 3:1).
Maybe the kids are still scared of me and/or are trying to figure me out, but I had a super hard time trying to get any of them to volunteer an explanation of the gospel in class. One energetic young man, who has sat under my teaching many times in the past, just about short-circuited the whole class "It's about the death, bur..." I launched into a very loud coughing fit to drown out his answer. We can't be just cutting right to the bottom line all the time...that's no fun. I really want the kids to reason through this (from the Scripture) so that I know I'm not just getting a rote answer. I told the young man, his brother, and my children, that they were not allowed to answer the question. Sometimes, life is like that as a teacher. :-)
A thirty-minute class prohibits me from doing what I really wanted to do (sit in dead silence until someone pipes up), so I tried the Mark 8:27 approach: "Okay, if you won't tell me your answer to the question, tell me what you've heard other people say. What do some people say the gospel is?" Eventually, something along the lines of "It's the good news of Jesus Christ" came out. I wrote that on the board. It was a start...and pretty much where I was hoping we'd start.
I launched into a series of questions, wrote the answers on the whiteboard, and kept drilling down to see where they'd bottom-out. I don't remember the precise exchange we had in class, but it wasn't far removed from this:
"Good news? Why is it good? If there's good news, isn't there also bad news? What's that?" I queried.
"The good news is that Christ died to save us from our sins," came the reply.
"So? Why do we need to be saved from our sins?"
"Because our sins separate us from God."
"Why is that a bad thing?"
"Because being separated from God means existing in hell for eternity after we die."
"Why is that?"
"Because Adam sinned in the garden."
"You mean to tell me that because some guy had an illegal snack several thousand years ago, we're all (by default) headed for a Christless eternity in hell? That doesn't sound very fair. What makes God think He can make up a rule like that?"
This one got them thinking, and there was a bit of a pause. I'm guessing most of the students had never been confronted with this question before. This is a good thing...I don't want to be completely useless to your children! So I told them about how I'm an amateur woodworker, and that one time I made a really stupid mistake hand-cutting dovetails on an expensive piece of African mahogany. When I realized that I'd lost literally hours of work, I lost my cool and beat the tar out of it with a mallet (see https://www.instagram.com/p/BtcXMWOlGkQ/ for the results...as well as the rubber woodworker's mallet in the background). "Now," I asked the class, "could anyone say anything to me about destroying what I'd made?"
"No." They rightly answered.
"Why not?"
"Because you made it—it was yours to do with as you so choose."
"Exactly. So what gives God the right to tell us how to live and the right to pronounce the judgment of an eternity in hell for sinning against Him?"
"Because He created us, and everything around us."
"Bingo. And where do we learn this?"
"In Genesis 1:1."
Do you see what I did? I took them on a long and winding road all the way from the gospel back to Genesis 1:1—"In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." When you start at the gospel and keep digging with "Why?" you'll bottom out at the very bedrock of the gospel: the book of Genesis.
So, what is the gospel? Here it is in list form:
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth (Genesis 1:1)
His creation, including Man, was flawless (Genesis 1:31)
God gave Adam and Eve one job: don't eat from that tree (Genesis 2:17)
God gave Adam and Eve a promise: if you eat from it, you will die (Genesis 2:17)
Eve was deceived, and Adam willfully disobeyed (Genesis 3)
God fulfills His promise (spiritual death in Genesis 3:8, physical death in Genesis 5:5).
We are all born with a sin nature (Psalm 51:5)
We all have sinned (Romans 3:23)
God is holy and cannot be in the presence of sin (Habakkuk 1:13), thus our sins have separated us from God (Isaiah 59:2).
The wages of our sin is death—both spiritual and physical (Romans 6:23)
That spiritual death has us, by default, on a "highway to hell." Those who find themselves there will endure the wrath of God for all eternity in flames that can never be quenched (Luke 16:24; Matthew 25:41; 2 Thessalonians 1:9; Revelation 14:11, 20:10,15).
There is nothing we can do to save ourselves, for even our "good" deeds are as filthy rags in God's sight (Isaiah 64:6)
But God made another promise back in the Garden—a Savior (Genesis 3:15)
God fulfilled His promise (John 3:16)
Jesus was crucified on our behalf for our sins according to the Scriptures, he was buried, and was raised again according to the Scriptures, and He appeared to hundreds of people after his resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:3-8)
God makes us another promise: that if we declare with our mouth that Jesus is Lord (i.e., He is our sovereign master and we His slaves because He bought us with the price of His own blood: 1 Corinthians 6:20; 7:23; Luke 6:46–49), and believe in our heart that God raised Him from the dead, we will be saved (Romans 10:9, 10); and that anyone who comes to Him in faith has been given the right to become children of God.
That's not just "good news." That's the Best News Ever (Romans 8).
Homework
Lord willing, we'll meet again on May 1. Let's have a Q&A day...you show up with questions, and I do what I can to answer them. If I can't give an answer that satisfies us both, then I will have homework! We'll call it "Get Back at Mr. Kreft Day."