5 weeks introducing students to an apologetic for their faith. We may not have absolute 100% certainty that the God of Christianity exists, but the fact that gospel values resonate with every human being is a compelling apologetic for the veracity of Christianity. The values of sacrificial love, grace, adoption, and justice resonate with the deepest longings of our heart. It’s almost as if we were created to value them by someone who values them.
Video Messages Included
Intro: Have you ever wondered if religions are like food? Maybe which is best is a matter of preference! There is some evidence for that, but there are also some compelling reasons to believe that the gospel is the one true belief system. We’re going to explore one of those reasons to believe in this series.
Truth: Not only were all things created by Jesus; all things were created through Jesus and for Jesus. Jesus is every component of the assembly line that builds humans. So if Christianity is true, then it makes sense that what resonates with Jesus would resonate deeply with each and every one of us as His creations. And when we explore gospel themes, that’s exactly what we discover.
The Point: We all bear the mark of Jesus.
Intro: “Survival of the fittest” is the way the world should work if everything we see is a product of random chance. To some extent, we’ve all had moments where “survival of the fittest” resonated with us. That’s because of sin.
Truth: Sacrificial love resonates on a much deeper level. Jesus knew that. That’s probably part of the reason He gave His disciples ONE new commandment to love others as He had loved them, and then followed that up by encouraging sacrificial love. The theme of sacrificial love moves you even when it has nothing to do with Jesus because you were created for it.
The Point: You owe your love of sacrificial love to your Creator.
Intro: Whether you realize it or not, you’ve shown yourself grace your entire life. You might not easily be as quick to show it to others (sin nature), but you’re hard wired with an eager desire for grace.
Truth: That’s why Jesus began reorienting humanity toward showing grace to others when He said first worry about the log in your eye before you point out the speck in the eye of someone else. You’ve been giving yourself the benefit of the doubt your whole life. In light of Jesus’ words and, more pointedly, His actions, it’s time to start giving that same benefit to others.
The Point: You’ve been shown grace to show grace.
Intro: We’ve all experienced moments in life that have left us feeling insignificant, invisible, worthless. Those moments only seem to reinforce the idea that you are just 1 out of 7 billion humans on planet earth and that you don’t matter. But, for some reason, there is a deep longing within each of us to matter.
Truth: That’s probably because we’ve been created through and for Jesus who sacrificed His life so God could adopt us as His own children. As human beings who bear the mark of Jesus, there is something within us longing for the very thing Jesus came to provide: Adoption.
The Point: You long to matter because you matter.
Intro: Rather than seeing the world as “survival of the fittest”, we all have a deep longing for justice to be served. We don’t like it when people get away with bad things.
Truth: Justice resonated with Paul just as it resonates with us, so he spent time evaluating God’s sense of justice. What he discovered is that, through Jesus, God has delivered justice for all who believe—whether they believed in the limited revelation they had back in the Old Covenant days, or in Jesus as Savior and Lord in the New Covenant days. And for those who don’t believe in Jesus, justice will be served after death. So whenever you look around and feel like there is injustice in the world, have peace.
The Point: God wants justice just as much as you do.