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It’s good to be here. This morning we drove in from Sedalia, Missouri. We’re right between Columbia, Missouri and Kansas City, and it took us two days to get here. And that big bus you see out there, it seemed like the closer we got, the more tired and tired that bus was getting. And it was just going slower and slower. There was a a hill as you’re coming. Uh, you’re we were in western Wyoming. It comes, you know, down real far and fast and we’re building up speed real well. And as we get to the to the hill, as it comes up on the other side, we had to pull over three times in order to make it to the to the top of the hill. So I have some pictures of the kids outside of the bus, you know, and it’s just sitting there on the side of the interstate. But but we made it. And it’s good to be here. Like you said, we were out here. First time was four years ago. Uh, during your church, believe it was your maybe your first or one of your first church services. And it’s just encouraging to me to the kids and to Maplewood Church to see how God is working in this place. And you all might feel sometimes like it’s slow, like it’s not as fast as you want it to be at. Maybe you’re not reaching your friends and and coworkers and family members the way you want, but God’s working in this place and we can see it, and it’s great.
Uh, I feel all of a sudden like, I’m not going to change what I’m going to preach on, But, uh, the seven churches that, uh, John writes to in revelation, uh, the first few chapters there, there’s a lot of warning for those churches and then some, some, uh, some praise for the things they did well and warning for the things that they were doing. Not so well. And, you know, as I read that I can I can put the church I go to in there some in few places I can say, yes, we do this well and we don’t do this very good. And, you know, I see some things you all are doing well and, and just read those chapters there at the beginning of revelation on your own time and be challenged to not become lukewarm, to not forget your first love. Uh, evangelizing and things like that. But remain a body of believers who are interested in desire to serve one another and to serve your community. And and God will continue to use you. This morning we’re going to talk. We’re going to answer a question. Try to answer a question quickly. And the question is, why did Jesus come to earth? Why did Jesus come to earth? And you might say, that’s easy because he loves us. And you know what? That really is the main answer.
That’s so we can be done now? No, but we’re going to. Yeah, we’re going to get we’re going to get a little deeper than that this morning. We’re going to get a little bit deeper. And let me challenge you just right from the beginning, to be the kind of believers who want to think deeper into the things of God, who desire to know what his Word says. Uh, don’t be satisfied with just the Bible says so, but seek to study it and to see that it is true through study. Understand it. The Bereans in Acts chapter 17 were called more noble than the rest of the believers, and that was because they went home and they studied the scriptures to make sure the things they were taught were so. And as you become deeper thinkers, as you become better students of the word, your faith, you’ll become more confident in your faith. You’ll be able to share your faith better, and you’ll love God more. As your understanding of who he is and how big he is and and and how he he loves us in spite of our sinfulness, in spite of how small we are, you’ll love them more. And as you love God more, you’ll have better victory over sin in your life. I know I’ve seen that in my life, as I feel like I love God more every year, and it seems like it becomes easier as time goes on to have victory over sin and never will be perfect, obviously, but it’s important to be students of his word and understand things about him.
So it’s my, uh, thing up here. All right, so why did Jesus come to earth? We’re going to answer this question with a series of questions. Okay. And if you come tonight to youth group, we’re going to try to answer another question. And that’s why do bad things happen? All right. Uh, what’s going on here? Why did you just come to Earth? The first question we’re going to ask is, why did he create us? Why did God even create us? It’s important that we understand. Why am I doing this the wrong way? It’s important to understand that God didn’t need us. God doesn’t need us. God doesn’t need anything. Everything that God needs or desires, and the way we think of needs and desires is provided for in the Trinity. He has perfect fellowship in the Trinity. He receives love from the Trinity. He he doesn’t. There’s nothing we can give God that he needs that satisfies his needs. And that’s good. I’m glad that God wasn’t sitting up there bored and needed some people to mess around with and play with, right? I mean, that’s not the kind of God I want to serve. I want a God who is self-sufficient, who doesn’t need me. But we’re going to see here in just a second.
He wants us. He wants us. God wanted to create. That’s one reason he created. God is the creator. The Bible calls him the creator. And the same way that a painter paints his masterpiece, or the person who built this building, you know the builder builds. God’s a creator and he creates. And, you know, he still does create. And science tells us that the cosmos, the outer space is expanding and there’s new stars being formed. And and when you think of Psalm 139, uh, the psalmist says that you knew me and my inward parts. You formed me. You knit me together in my mother’s womb that God is creating. He’s continually creating and making things. And so that’s one reason, uh, God made us was because he is the creator. He just is a creator. And as we, uh, Jeff and I, Jeff Blake, uh, one of the guys who came with me on this trip, he’s been out here. This is his third time. This is my second time. He brought a group out here by himself when I was in Afghanistan. And so, anyway, uh, we were outside last night sitting on the deck at Connie’s house, and we were sitting there with Connie, and we’re looking at the moon, and we’re just watching the moon rise. And it’s just beautiful as it comes over the mountains. And and we weren’t seeing too many stars because of all the lights.
But where we live in Missouri, it’s a little more rural. We see a lot of stars. And Psalm 19 and other places in the Psalms tell us that the the heavens declare the glory of God. And as you look at this, this picture I have here, you can see where the sun is supposed to be, right? And just think, you can’t even see it. And if you could put the our planet on there, it’s revolving around that sun. You definitely can’t see that. And yet we’re on it. Each individual is on that planet and God cares and God loves and God desires to have that relationship with us. Uh, 900. I had to look this up. How many zeros that is, I know 2 trillion because the national debt. But 900 and 925 quadrillion. Am I right? Does anybody know if I’m wrong out there? Okay, I had to look it up because I’m all right. I’m sure if I. I needed to know that. Because if I said it wrong, someone will correct me. So. All right, so God didn’t need us. But he’s a creator and that’s just one of the things he does. Uh, I’ve already said it. God wanted us. God wanted us. In Genesis chapter one, verse 26 to 31, he is the passage where he says, let us create man in our image, after our likeness. And he’s talking to the other members of the Trinity, and man is created and he wanted to have fellowship with us.
We see in the first few chapters of Genesis the way that the relationship was with Adam and Eve, the way God’s relationship was with them, in fact. Turn to Genesis chapter three, turn to Genesis chapter three. We’ll look real close specifically at how that relationship was. Turn to verse eight. Says and they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day. And Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord among the trees of the garden. And the Lord God called to Adam and said to him, where are you? And this was normal. God came down to the garden, and he walked, and he talked, and he spoke with Adam and Eve, and they had a relationship as real as I’m standing here right now, they talked to God personally, face to face. Didn’t have to, you know, they they saw the you know, they were in the presence of God in a way that were not in a way that’s been messed up because of their sin. It doesn’t mean our relationship isn’t very real with the Lord, but it’s not what it was intended to be. And someday we’ll be in the presence of God fully again in heaven. But God’s original design and purpose was to walk with us and talk with us and and just have that real personal relationship.
But sin, Sin messed that up. So God created us not because he needed us, but because he wanted us. And there’s something unique about the love God has for us as being the only parts of his creation that are created in his image. Does God love the animals? Yes. Does God love the ocean and the mountains? Yes. But God loves us more than anything. We talk about how big outer space is and how small we are. We’re still the pinnacle of his creation. We’re the only thing he created that’s created in his image, and he desires to have that relationship and friendship with us. As we sit there in Genesis chapter three, and we see how God came to the garden, and he’s walking and talking with Adam and Eve, and they hid themselves from his presence because they had sinned. Uh, that’s our response to a God who’s bigger than us, who doesn’t need us, who creates us, who wants us. That’s what Adam and Eve did. They sinned. They fell. They fell from his original plan. And they fell in such a way that we all inherit a sin nature. Every human being born after Adam and Eve had has a decision to make. And and Adam and Eve had that decision as well. And that was. Am I going to obey God? Am I going to obey God? Am I going to follow him? Am I going to love him back? And obviously the answer Adam and Eve gave was, no, I’m not going to follow him.
I’m not going to obey him, and we’re not going to love him back. You know, God experiences something as a result of us. He experiences grief and sadness. Do you think God experienced grief and sadness prior to making man? No. Was God surprised when man sinned? Absolutely not. Was he surprised at this new feeling he had of grief and sadness? No. See, God lives different than us and doesn’t, you know. He’s just completely different than us. And we think we exist in the present and the past and the future. Time ticks and we keep going on. God exists outside of time, and God in heaven, before he created the world, saw what it was going to be like. He knew that he would create man. He because he knew us. He wanted us. Not that he needed us. He knew he was going to create man. He knew that man would sin, choose not to love him back. He knew that he was going to have to send his son to come and die on the cross for our sins, and so so that we could have that relationship restored the way he intends. He knew he was going to experience grief and sadness. Jesus knew that he was going to say, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me as he died upon the cross? Yet that desire for a relationship with us and that just love for us outweighed that.
When I sit, you know, when I have a decision to make, I stand back and I look and I weigh the pros and the cons and I say, not worth it. Or yep, that’s a good one. Let’s go for it. And I tell you, if it involves pain, it’s something I don’t want to do. I wake up in the morning, I say, okay, am I going to go for a run today? Okay, if I go for a run, I can eat here later. I can watch the scale at least maintain. But might hurt. And sometimes that idea of the pain outweighs the benefit. God’s looks and outside of time, where he exists and he sees everything that was going to cost him to create us, and he says, yes, let’s do it. Let’s do it. I love them enough. I love them enough. Let’s turn to Genesis chapter six, verse six. And here’s where we see this grief. And the Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and he was grieved in his heart, because verses prior tell us that everything man did was wicked, that the thoughts and intents of his heart was evil continually. Totally opposite and contrary to God’s plan. Man doing it on their own. We see how that goes usually, don’t we? The Bible tells us how to live life.
It tells us how to live a way that’s pleasing to God. And we try to do it our on our own. And that gives God this grief and this sadness when we sinned. Send the original plan was messed up and our relationship with God was, uh, not destroyed, just changed. Changed in a negative way. All right. What’s a guy going to leave it like that? No. It’s good, it’s good that God has a plan. It says, so what did God do? As we look in Genesis chapter six, we see how, uh, God’s grieved that he made man and man’s thoughts and intents their heart are evil continually. God has to do something. And there’s a reason God has to do something. It’s because he’s a righteous judge in the book of Romans talks about that as well as other passages. How God can’t let sin go unpunished. God just can’t let sin be in his presence. And what God decides to do, we know, is he decides to destroy the earth. He decides to start over, and one man finds favor in God’s eyes and is because he lived righteously. And that was Noah. And God provided a way of escape from the coming judgment. God provided a way of escape. Noah Noah preaches hope. You can see these. He preaches for 120 years, preaches for 120 years. And how many people do you think accepted his message? None. None 120 years.
You know, I’m a youth pastor. I have 30, 40 kids in my youth group. And I sit there and I teach them and I think, man, is anybody listening, is anybody paying attention. And that’s just, you know, maybe for a few weeks in a row, I feel like their minds are somewhere else. Noah, for 120 years preaches not only does nobody respond, but they make fun of him. They make fun of him. Okay. And I have some a couple of my kids sitting back there and they’re laughing right now. But I hope you guys pay attention, all right. He preached righteousness. Uh, we see in Second Peter that Noah preached not only about the coming judgment, but about righteousness. No one responded till it was too late, or when it was when the judgments come. And people want to change, don’t they? And this was a temporary salvation for this specific instance. Okay, God creates man. Man sins. Man grieves God. The thoughts and intents of man’s heart and his actions are continually evil. Gods grieved to the point of I’m going to start over. I’m going to start over. He takes Noah and his family, puts him in the ark, gives everybody a chance, however, to respond to the coming judgment. Noah preaches. No one responds. God provides a way of escape. And this is a temporary, uh, uh, salvation, if you will, and this becomes a picture of a greater thing.
We’re going to talk about that here just in a second. So today we have an eternal version of this man still sins, right? Man still sins. The world is not getting better. It’s not becoming a better place. There’s people that’ll say, uh, well, the world will continually get better and better, and more people will come to Jesus Christ, and then God will set up his kingdom. Wrong. It won’t work that way. The world continually is going to get worse and worse until Jesus Christ comes back. Uh, first he’s going to rescue the church. He’s going to judge the world, and then he’ll set up his kingdom. That’s the way it’s going to go. And we can see that it’s pretty obvious. It doesn’t mean we don’t try to hold back sin. It doesn’t mean we don’t do our part to help people come to Christ. We should feel a sense of urgency. That impending judgment is coming in the same way that that that ark was being built and there was a certain amount of time to preach. There’s a certain amount of time right now to try to reach the lost. And that’s our job. That’s our job. Just like Noah had to preach. So today, man still sins. And you guessed it, God is still pained and grieved by his creation. He’s still pained and grieved. And you know, I have to ask the question just flying through this here right now.
Well, I’m getting ahead of myself. Matthew 2337. It’s one of the saddest verses I feel in the Bible. Matthew 2337 and as you look at this picture here, you see Jesus looking down on the city of Jerusalem. And if you want to go ahead and turn there in Matthew 2337. I’ll read it here in a second. You know, Jesus, in the last slide there you saw he still loves us despite that grief that we caused him. He still loves us despite despite the fact that mankind as a whole does not want to have a relationship with him. And we live in a culture where, uh, what’s right for you is right for you. What’s right for me is right for me. Complete rejection of God. Complete rejection of the word of God. Uh, the Bible is a story book. There’s nothing real in it. And that couldn’t be more false. God still loves us. When he was on earth. You would think that as people see God in the flesh, they would respond in droves, wouldn’t you? It was very few that did. You know, three years after Jesus started talking, they killed him, right? And that’s one of my responses. I have certain friends. I even have a friend from Bible College who he says, you know, I wish if if God would just show himself here on earth, man would accept him. I say, what are you talking about? He did do that.
And in three years they killed him. Now he’s given us his word. He’s given us a job to do. And that’s the way it works. We have to share the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ. How man can be saved with the lost. And so here at Matthew 2337, let’s read it. It says, O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, this is Jesus talking. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her. How long I wanted to gather you, uh, to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings. But you were not willing. And that’s his desire. That’s always been his desire. He wants to gather us. He wants to give us a place of rest, a place of peace, a place of comfort, a place where we can have relationship with him and the way he intended in the beginning, in the garden. And man is just not willing. Man’s just not willing. So, you know, I ask myself, I hope you guys are do this too. And I don’t do it enough. But I think about God and in Jesus, in the Bible and and just different things. I try to meditate on it often. And, and so this is where I come with this. And I ask myself, why God? Why not just take the believers home now? Amen. Why not just be done? Why? Why do you carry on? Why do you continue to feel grief and pain? That rejection from your creation, the ones created in your image.
Why not just take us home? Why do you let the world continue in sin? You don’t have to do that. That’s what I’m thinking. He doesn’t. He doesn’t owe us anything. You think? God, you’re a righteous judge, right? Why do you continue? Why do you continue? You know what? It’s because he loves us. The simple answer rings true. It’s because he loves us. And he continues to give us time and continues to give the lost time to come to him. And it says that in second Peter three nine, turn to second Peter three nine. This is perhaps one of the most beautiful verses in the Bible. We just looked at to me one of the saddest. And I see here the mercy and the love and the grace of God in this verse. Second Peter three nine. Go on up to verse eight. Go on up to verse eight. It says, but, beloved, do not forget this one thing, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. Verse nine. The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some count slackness, but is long suffering toward us, long suffering. I love that word. It’s better than patient. God’s patient toward us. No long suffering for a long time. God is suffering with us.
Patience. Boy, it’s not easy. God is long suffering toward us, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. That’s why God delays judgment. That’s why God delayed judgment. For 120 years. When Noah was building the ark, he wanted to give everybody a chance. No excuse, no excuses. God delays judgment now. Because he’s long suffering and he wants to see. No, he doesn’t want to see anybody perish. But he wants to see all come to him. He wants to see all come to repentance. How are people going to come to him? People naturally just going to go to the Bible and read it and understand it and go to the right passages and hear, you know, no, it does happen. We have a job to do. Each one of us has a job to do. And that Jesus told us what that was before he went to heaven. Go write Matthew chapter 28. Go into the world. Preach the gospel to everybody, teaching them the things he commanded. Baptizing them in the name of the father, son, and the Holy Spirit. Teaching them, preaching. We have to know what’s in His Word. In order to carry that out. We have to know what’s in His Word. God’s gift of eternal salvation Jesus had to come to earth for this to happen. You know, I was talking about when we make that decision, we weigh the pros and the cons and we decide, okay, is it worth it? Is it not? This is what God knew from the beginning.
He knew it before we were created. He knew it forever, in eternity past that he would make man. That man would sin. Man would reject him, man would pain him, and that he would send his son in order to restore the relationship back to what it was supposed to be. Jesus had to come to earth to die for us. He continues to provide a way of salvation the same way he did with the Ark, and he does it through redemption. Redemption. The word redemption means buying back. A ransom is paid, and therefore we’re able to be bought back. And that ransom was Jesus blood. That was the price Jesus requires, and God requires it. As we look in the Old Testament, the blood sacrifice, the payment of sin requires a life. And if we want to do it on our own and not accept Jesus Christ, then what happens is man pays for their sin forever in hell and praise God. He didn’t leave it that way because really, that’s what we deserve. And it goes back to the simple answer. We said it at the very beginning. He loves us. He loves us. He provides the way of escape. He provides the way of restoring a relationship. But it was it cost him a lot. It cost him a lot. Turn to Ephesians one chapter seven.
Ephesians one, chapter seven. We’re going to read a few verses here. Did I say Ephesians one chapter seven? How about Ephesians one verse seven? All right. In whom we have redemption through his blood. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of his grace. Grace. Grace, mercy, mercy is not receiving something bad that I do deserve. Like hell. Grace is receiving something good that I don’t deserve, like the redemption and the buying back of his blood with his blood. He loves us. He made that way. Turn two. Uh. Ephesians chapter two, verse four. But God, who is rich in mercy because of his great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. By grace you have been saved and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come he might show the exceeding riches of his grace and his kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. Positionally, if we accept this gift, this blood that’s been shed for us, it’s like we’ve just been restored back to what God originally intended.
We’re sitting with God in the heavenly places. We can communicate with him in the way that you cannot communicate with him before you accept him. We’re given this gift. We’re said it’s by his mercy. It’s by his love, and it’s by his grace. It’s not of works. It’s not of works. There’s nothing we can do to earn this gift. When is good enough reached? We can’t reach it because as soon as I think I’m doing pretty good, if I’m trying to earn my own salvation, I’m going to meet somebody who’s doing better. That’s right. Because you can’t sit there and say, well, I’m doing better than him and her and him and her because they’re doing better than me. When’s good enough, good enough. God doesn’t make us play this guessing game. He provided the way. It’s a free gift. It’s the gift of God. And accepting it is not a work, Just reaching your hands out and accepting that gift is not a work. It’s free. Nothing we can do to earn it, you know. It’s great. There’s nothing we can do to lose it either. There’s nothing we can do to lose it. Because that’s no gift either, is it? When. It’s when the gift is given and accepted, it’s ours forever. It’s ours forever. Now what? God wants to know us. He wants to have a relationship with us, and we need to act like it here at the end, here of Ephesians 289 and ten, it talks about created to do good works.
Yeah, we’re created to do the things that please God, obviously. Right. And sin got in the way. And we’re not pleasing God. He creates a way to restore the relationship back to where he intended it to be. And now he wants us to live a certain way, and works are a result of our salvation. They are never they’re not the source of our salvation. We just talked about that. But I should do good things as a result of my salvation. I’m married and I know the things my wife enjoys, and I know the things she does not like. So if I’m a smart man at all, I try to do the things she likes and stay away from the things she doesn’t like. Right? That makes sense. It’s called love. I do that because of love, not just because she’ll get mad at me. God, as we learn about him, as we read His word, as we study, as we think about him, as we seek for the deeper answers other than just, you know, the basic little answers. We tell the kids in the back, our Our love grows. And that’s why I said it’ll become easier for us to defeat sin. As my love grows for my wife and I learn more about her, I’m able to do the things that please her.
As my love grows to the Lord. As I learn more things about him, I’ll have a greater desire to do the things that please him and to stay away from the things that don’t please him. Doing the things that please him. Those. Those are the good works, the things that we do. Do it. Staying away from the things that don’t please him is just defeating sin in our life. It’s the way we should live. We’re so small and insignificant compared to God. He didn’t need us. He wanted us knowing the pain we would cause him. Loved us enough to send His Son to die on the cross for our sins. To provide a free gift of salvation. In order to have the kind of relationship with him he intends. Someday in heaven it will be completely perfect. Sin will no longer be a consideration and won’t be. It won’t even be a memory. We’ll just be in the presence of God, praising him forever and ever. So this relationship we have with God, as we accept him, we become new creatures. Old things are passed away. And I talked about this and didn’t click it. But you got the point. So here we are. We’re going to review a little bit at the end here. Why did Jesus come to earth. He loves us. Yes. But the deeper answer he came in order to restore the relationship that was lost at the fall.
To restore the relationship that was lost at the fall. And he did this through redemption, through buying us back with his blood. We have to respond. And that’s through repentance. Enough hours up there, I think I got them all. All right. That’s what we have to do. We have to respond. It’s a free gift, but it’s not yours until you respond. And so I hope today, if you’re here and you’ve been thinking about Jesus and you’ve been reading your Bible, but you haven’t responded yet to the free gift that you would realize today that you would understand. It’s free. Nothing you can do to earn it. Nothing you can do to lose it. It’s just a God who loves us enough to make us. Even though he knew the pain we would cause. A God who loves us enough, and he loves all mankind enough to delay judgment and to provide a way of escape from the judgment the same way he did in Noah’s day. He’s doing it today. Well, we’re not any different than the people from Noah’s day. God just is delaying judgment. And there’s a way out, and there’s a way to have the relationship with him that he intended. And so I hope if you haven’t ever accepted Jesus Christ as your Savior, that today is the day, don’t count on anything else but his blood. That’s pretty simple, isn’t it? Praise God it’s not difficult because we’d be in a lot of trouble if it was. He loves us enough to make it easy on us.