For the past year we’ve been studying the life of Jesus—his birth, his life, his ministry, his death and resurrection. Before that we studied the Old Testament—from Abraham onward. After studying this all I’m sure you’re wondering: what is the point? Why did all of this happen?
Why was Jesus the answer? Why did he have to die? Why did he die on a cross? What does the resurrection mean? These are all completely valid questions, and today I’m going to try to help put it all together for you. I say try, because I’m not a theologian, and no one can really claim to know anything for sure—only God himself knows the full answer, but I can tell you what the commonly held thoughts are.
So…what is the point? What does it all mean?
You don’t have to study the Bible to know that people aren’t perfect. We live in a broken world. In the grand scheme of things, you guys are pretty young, and yet I bet a lot of you have already experienced betrayal, hurt, and maybe even some trauma. And maybe you’ve hurt other people—a friend, a sibling, a parent. Maybe you’ve said something terrible, maybe you did something terrible, maybe you physically hurt them. I don’t know. But every single one of us in this room has done something wrong. It’s a guarantee.
Everyone in this room has also probably done something beautiful, something wonderful, something truly caring and loving. You gave your sibling something you wanted, because they also wanted it. You did all your chores without your parents asking. You helped another kid you didn’t know even though it might risk people making fun of, or bullying you.
This is human nature, the conflict inside of us—that we’re capable of so much good, and so much bad. Why is that? Why are we like that?
Well it goes all the way back to the beginning. Someone read Genesis 1:26-31.
26 Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.”
27 So God created humankind in his image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.
28 God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.” 29 God said, “See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food. 30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. 31 God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.
God made people, humans, man and woman, and he made them in his image. God is good, and God made humans to be good, like him. To be capable of joy, love, kindness, goodness, creativity, and all the good things that are of God. After he created the humans, he looked at them, and he thought, “This is Good.”
He didn’t look at the humans and think, “Man, I really messed up” or “wow, these weird creatures aren’t going to work out.” Now, he looked at us and said, “Wow, I did a good job, and these new human things are awesome. They are so good.”
Humans were made to be good.
But humans were also made with the ability to choose, the ability to choose not to do good. Which we see in the garden, when Adam and Eve disobey God by taking the apple. That moment changes everything. It’s like dropping food coloring in water—first it’s all clear and perfect and pure, and then one drop spreads through everything. It touches everything.
So yes, we’re still water—we’re still good. But we also have this bad food coloring in us. Which is why so many of us choose to do bad things even when we know they are bad.
We were given free will, the ability to choose between bad and good, and while we often choose to do good, we often choose to do bad.
These bad things—we call this sin.
There are choices in life that are not sin—choosing whether to wear red socks or blue socks is a choice, but neither choice is a sin. The choices that are sins are usually choices between right and wrong—the choices to ignore your siblings annoying behavior or to hit them to make them stop. These sin choices usually result in someone being hurt in some way—physically or emotionally, and sometimes that person is yourself.
Or a sin can be against God. It may not hurt another person, but it hurts God—like using his name in vain, or not worshipping him, or not obeying him.
When we read the Old Testament we see people who make choices everywhere. Abraham is given the choice to follow God or not. He did follow God, and because of that he and his descendants become God’s chosen people. God also gives them an area of land, the Promised Land, Israel. Later he’s given the choice to trust God—that God will provide a child—or not trust God. When he doesn’t trust God, and he fathers a child with Sarah’s slave Hagar, he ends up hurting Sarah, Hagar, and his son Ishmael. His choice to not follow God results in pain and suffering for so many people, it’s clear to see how his sin affects his family.
Generations later, Abraham’s descendants end up slaves in Egypt. To save them God brings them a deliverer—Moses—and through Moses, God shows the Egyptians and everyone that God is the most powerful. Moses defeats the Egyptians and their gods, and the Moses leads the people out of Egypt.
Through Moses God also gives people the torah, which means law. This law is supposed to show people how to follow God. It covers all sorts of laws, laws about how to treat each other, civil laws that have to do with how society handles people and different circumstances, and laws about how to worship God and come into his presence. These laws were supposed to make it clear to people how they were to behave, it was supposed to lay out, in black and white, what choices they are to make in different circumstances.
You would think this would make it easier for people to follow God! That because they have laws, they could just look up what to do in every circumstance and be like “Yep, that’s right” or “Nope, that’s wrong.” But as we study the Old Testament, we see that it never quite works like that. And people, by and large fell into one of two traps:
One, they just ignored the law and made whatever decision they wanted. We see this with King David—when he chooses to rape Bathsheba, even though she doesn’t want to have sex with him AND she’s married, so he’s breaking two laws there. But he decided his desire for Bathsheba mattered more than her safety, her marriage’s sanctity, and God’s will. He wanted her, and that was all that mattered.
The other trap people fell into was they followed the law too closely. It should seem like that wouldn’t be possible, but it’s true. We see this in the New Testament with the Pharisees. They follow the law so closely that they’re willing to hurt people. They would rather let people die on the Sabbath than work on the Sabbath. This is what we call legalism.
The Law is a complicated subject. To be perfect, you had to follow it all, but no person is capable of that. Which is why Jewish people did sacrifices. They would take an unblemished—physically perfect—lamb or bull or dove—something that had value or worth to you. Then you had to take this thing of great value and kill it and burn it at the Temple, as a sacrifice to God. They made sacrifices to God to cover their sins, the churchy word for this is to “atone” for their sins. Sacrifices were performed at the Temple, sacrifices for every sin. This is what Yon Kippur, the Day of Atonement, is—it is the holiest day in the Jewish Calendar even today.
And why is this necessary? Well God is good and perfect. And only perfect things can be with him. So if you were blemished by any sin, you could not be with God, in heaven. But it’s impossible to be perfect. So you sacrifice an animal to cover for your sins.
The law was an impossible standard. And with the sacrificial system, you were never forgiven forever. You had to come back over and over again, and make more sacrifices. It was a never-ending cycle.
Then came Jesus. A perfect person. Never once did he sin against God or man. Jesus was God’s own son. So why did he have to die?
To be a perfect sacrifice, a sacrifice of the greatest value.
Jesus was God’s son, but he was also God himself, a part of the trinity that makes up God. God became a human, God became incarnate to walk this earth with us, to experience life with us, and he came to die for us. God made himself a perfect sacrifice to cover all the sins of all people for all eternity.
Someone read Matthew 27:50-52.
50 Then Jesus cried again with a loud voice and breathed his last. 51 At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. The earth shook, and the rocks were split.
When Jesus died the curtain in the temple was torn in two. This was a sign that because of Jesus death, there was no longer separation between us and God. And also a sign that the temple would no longer be needed—with Jesus death there was no longer need for any more sacrifices. The Temple system was no longer required.
But Jesus just couldn’t die—that was only one part of what it took—Jesus had to conquer death.
It is because of sin that we die. If sin had never entered this world we would all probably be living forever in the Garden of Eden. But because of sin we are cursed to death. Jesus conquered death—he died and he came back on his own power. No one raised him from the dead—he raised himself.
You can imagine Jesus victorious, throwing open the gates of death and bringing everyone out—because that’s what Jesus did.
Remember in the Old Testament there was no concept of heaven or hell—we don’t know if people in the Old Testament went to heaven. Only Sheol, the place of the dead is described. It’s entirely possible that until Jesus conquered death, that no one went to heaven. That when people died before they just went to sleep in Sheol, waiting.
But with Jesus conquering death he opened the gates of Sheol, the gates of Death, and made a way for everyone to have eternal life with him in heaven. This is John 3:16.
16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.
This is what Jesus has done for us. He died, and every sin we ever committed was laid on him, so that we could live eternally with him. That’s how much God loves us. He died for us.
He died for you. Even if you were the only human on the planet, God loves you so much, he would die for you.
For God so loved you, that he gave his only Son so that you could believe in him and not perish, but have eternal life.
Jesus died for you.
We have all done bad things. We have sinned. We have hurt people. I want you to take a moment and think about it. Think about the last time you hurt someone—the last time you hit your sibling or did something just to cause them pain. Think about how you may have hurt your friend’s feelings, or done something intentionally to cause them harm. Let’s all think about it.
[Pause for a moment]
[Tell a story of a time you hurt someone preferably from childhood, something they can relate to if you can]. I once hit my sister so hard I left a red handprint on her back. I once purposefully got off the teeter-totter when she was the top just to see her slam hard into the ground. But those physical pains aren’t even the worst things I’ve done to her. We once got in a huge fight, and I told her that she only freaked out over homework and went into anxiety spirals for the attention. I took a fight against her own mind that she was suffering from—her struggle with OCD—and told her it was all fake, just for attention.
To me it was nothing, to her it cut like a knife.
I hurt her. I intentionally hurt her. Because I wanted to. Because I wanted to cause her pain.
And that’s why Jesus died. Jesus died for me—because I am a sinner, because I have done terrible things. And even if it was only me, if I was the only one, the only sinner, Jesus would have died. Because that’s how much he loves me. He loves me.
He died for me.
And he died for you. Because Jesus wants you to be with him forever.
This is the choice we have to make. Jesus is offering us all something. This is not about heaven or hell. Heaven and hell are side effects. It’s not about where you’re going.
It’s about where you are. It’s about God himself looking down at me—Mandy Pietruszewski Self—cruel, mean, angry, bitter me, and offering out a hand. Even though I’m not worthy to touch his hand, because I’m dirty and broken, and he’s perfect and pure. And if I just take his hand, he’ll lift me up, he’ll teach me to be like him, a person of grace and forgiveness, who loves. He’ll teach me how to be a person who doesn’t want to hurt people, a person who loves people. A person who makes this world a better place.
A person who follows the example of Jesus Christ.
Everyone in this world will hurt you at some point, no one is perfect. And then there is God, offering a hand.
You can choose to take God’s hand, or not. You can be a person who decides to make the Kingdom of God on earth, a person who chooses to spread the love of God, or you can choose not to. God gave you the choice. He wants you to choose him. Not because you’re afraid of the afterlife, but because you love him and want to be like him.
This is what it means to be a Christian, to follow the example of Jesus Christ—to try to be like him. We love him because he first loved us, we follow him because we want to be like him.
You guys are in middle school. For many of you, coming to church is about doing what your parents tell you to do. You’ve made no choice to follow Jesus, if you consider yourself a Christian it’s because that’s how you were raised.
But at some point, in your life you need to make a choice. It might be when you’re in high school or college, it might be next week. And you’ll have to ask yourself if you really believe all of this, if you really want to follow Jesus.
I want you guys to really think about that. I want you to reflect on your lives and your future, and I want you think about the choices before you.
I’m not going to pressure you to make any choice now, I just want you to think.
Are you ready to follow Jesus?
[Allow space for quiet contemplation]
I’m going to pray for us, and after I pray I want you guys to stay quiet. You can either sit here for a little while longer or you can leave, but if you’re in this room I want you to be quiet and leave room for people who are still thinking about all of this. And if you want to talk to me privately about anything we’ve discussed, I will be here for a while.
Dear God, thank you for today. Thank you for letting us come together and discuss the life and legacy of Jesus. God help us as we reflect on our lives, to see the times when we did harm or hurt because we wanted to, times when we chose to sin. Please God forgive us for those times. Help us as we look to the future, as we live our lives, to choose you, to choose right, to choose to spread love and hope and your goodness. God, I know some of these kids have done terrible things to others, and some have experienced terrible things at the hands of others. Help them to know they are forgiven, and help them as they work towards healing and forgiveness of the wrongs others have done to them. Help them to know they are loved, and that even if every other human on this planet wrongs them, or fails them, that you never will, you will be with all of us, forever, always holding out your hand, waiting for the day when they choose to take it. Help them to choose you, to choose to follow Jesus who died for us, because he loves us. Be with us, God. In Jesus’s Name I pray, Amen.