THE GOOD NEWS OF GOD

 

An Introduction to the Gospel of God for Children Aged 5+

 

 

God made the world and everything in it. God made the universe and the stars and all the planets. God can do anything and God knows everything. God is called All-Mighty and there is no one as powerful as God. God is Beautiful and Gentle and Kind.

 

God is Love.

 

God is the God of Truth. God does not lie.

 

God has a very special Book which we call the Bible. The Bible was written thousands of years ago.

Everything in the Bible which God said would happen by now has happened just like God said it would.

 

God also says, in the Bible, how we can be with Him in Heaven forever.

 

We know we can trust God and believe everything He says because God never lies. It's so good to know that God can be trusted and we never have to wonder if what God has said is true.

 

There are many people who don't even believe that there is God. There are other people who don't  know God but who think they do. They believe they have been taught the truth about God but they are very wrong in what they believe. Some people who teach lies about God know what they are doing is wrong. They are very bad people. Other people just don't know that what they are teaching is not what God says.

 

We need to be very, very careful what we believe about God and make sure that it matches with what God has said in the Bible.

 

The Bible says that the first people God made were named Adam and Eve. They lived a very good life and loved God very much.

 

There were many trees in the Garden of Eden where Adam and Eve lived and God told them that they could eat of any tree they wanted to. There was only one tree, which was called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, that God told Adam not to eat from.

 

God said that if they ate from that tree Adam and Eve would die.

 

If Adam and Eve ate from that tree they would be disobeying God and sin would be in their lives and sin causes death. Sin is doing what is wrong, or bad, like not doing what mummy or daddy tell you.

 

God also warned Adam and Eve that not only would their bodies one day die but that they would also die spiritually. The right way to say this word is spi - ri - choo - lee. This would mean that Adam and Eve would no longer be God's friends if they ate from that tree God had warned them not to eat from.

 

We all know that there are bad people in the world. People who hurt other people and people who tell lies. The worst liar in the world is someone called Satan. The Bible calls him the Devil and there is nothing good in him. Satan is an angel who used to be a good angel and a friend of God. But then one day Satan sinned and became a very evil angel who hated God.

 

Satan came to Eve one day as a snake. Satan lied to Eve and told her that God was lying. Satan said that Adam and Eve would not die if they ate from that tree God had warned them about.

 

We learned earlier, didn't we, that God does not lie, but that Satan is a liar. The Son of God, Jesus, Who is also God, said that Satan is the father of lies.

 

Satan lied and tricked Eve and both Adam and Eve ate of the fruit from the tree that God told Adam not to eat from.

 

After this, when God came walking in the Garden calling Adam and Eve, instead of running to Him they both ran away from Him and hid themselves. They were scared of God because they knew they had disobeyed God. This showed that what God said would happen was true.

 

Because we all come from Adam and Eve everyone does not know God. Everyone sins and one day dies. So many people don't know God and don't believe that God is the only God but believe that pretend gods made up by men are the true god. They think that these gods are the real God.

 

Now that man is spiritually dead to God no one can go to Heaven. No one loves God. No one can do anything to come to God because no one knows Who the true God is.

 

Sin is a terrible thing because it makes us do bad things. The worst thing is that people don't love God. That means they don't obey God. And, it means that everybody one day dies and will never be with God.

 

THE GOOD NEWS IS THAT GOD CAN HELP. GOD IS THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN HELP.

 

Before God made the world God chose lots and lots of people to go to Heaven to be with Him and be happy forever. God knew that no one could ever come to Him by themselves, because of sin. And so God chose the people He wanted to come to Him and be with Him forever. He loves those people and their names are all written in a very special Book in Heaven.

 

But, before any of these people could come to be with God they had to be perfect like God. They had to know God and believe that He is the only real God. And, all their sins must be punished. The punishment for sins would take forever and because of this no one could ever be with God.

 

No one can come to God without God. No one can make themselves perfect.

 

Just like a rotten apple can't make the rottenness go away, no one can make themselves be perfect. Would you eat a rotten apple? No, you wouldn't would you. You couldn't eat it because rotten apples are yucky aren't they.  In the same way God cannot have us in Heaven with Him because, just like the rotten apple, we are all rotten, too, because of sin.

 

No matter how many good things we do we can never become perfect. We can never pay the price for our sins because that would take forever.

 

God is a God of Justice. The right way to say this word is jus-tiss. All sin must be punished. God does not let anyone get away with doing bad, like mummy and daddy do sometimes.

 

So, God knew that He would have to send His Son, Jesus, into the world to make what is called a sacrifice for all those people God chose to be with Him. The right way to say this word is sac - ri - fice.

 

Jesus is God.

 

Jesus would come to earth as a Man and live a perfect life because there was no sin in Him, because Jesus is God.

 

Jesus told everyone about God, His Father, and He did many amazing things. He made sick people better straight away. He made people who could not walk to jump up from their beds and walk. Jesus also made blind people see and Jesus even made people alive again after they had died.

 

At the end, Jesus was taken by bad men and put on a cross. Jesus died as a sac - ri - fice for all the people that God chose to be with Him forever.

 

Jesus paid the price for all of those people's sins by dying for them. Jesus took the punishment they deserved and He gave to them his perfection. The Bible calls it His Righteousness. The right way to say this word is ry - chess - ness. Jesus did not have to pay the price for the sins of God's people forever because Jesus was Perfect. He did not have sin.

 

By taking away the sins of the people God chose and replacing them with His very own Righteousness, Jesus made all those God had chosen to be with Him be as perfect as He is.

 

These people will all be made to see and understand everything you have read here and believe it.

Believing the truth shows that a person has been saved by God.

 

One man in the Bible asked one of God's people what he needed to do to be saved. God's man told him to believe in Jesus and all He has done to save the people God chose, and he would be saved.

 

No one is saved by anything they do or because of who they are. God is the only one who can save anyone. God does everything that needs to be done to save the people He chose.

 

This is called Grace and Grace is a very special word. Grace means God doing. Grace is God doing for His people what they could not do for themselves. Isn't God Lovely.

 

And to all the people God saves by His grace He gives them a Gift. This Gift is called Faith. No one is saved without the grace of God and no one can believe the Truth of God without the Gift of Faith which only comes from God.

 

And because of this Faith all God's chosen people see, understand and believe the true God and how He saves. They don't believe in lies about God anymore but only the truth.

 

The Message of how God saves is called the Gospel. The word Gospel means Good News. The Good News about the grace of God and the Faith of God that saves all the people God chose to be with Him by His Son, Jesus.

 

Because of all these great things God has done, those people He has chosen will all go to be with Him when they die and they will be with God forever and ever. God's Jus-tiss is satisfied and there will be no punishment for those people because Jesus took their punishment for them.

 

Nothing bad will ever happen to them again. They will always be happy because they will always be with God because God loves them very, very much.