Jesus is Perfect!!!

I'm going to diverge from the fear of God theme a moment and reflect on some truth about God. I had the pleasure of leading a short Bible study tonight with some sweet young kids at the MLK Rec Center, and I had 15ish minutes to talk about the truth that God is Perfect! Holy Cow, what a loaded truth, so simple and yet so amazing to reflect on, and so critical to understand. Let's think about this together...
So, perfect is very easily defined as lacking fault or defect. It's easier to think about perfection when we are describing something or someone, and so I started out asking these kids, when you hear that God is Perfect, what are some things you think of about God? I wanted to hear their thoughts, but this might have been one of the first times they had been asked to think about what that means. I heard God is Good, God is Faithful, God is True. And I added some of my own suggestions for them to ponder. God is trustworthy. God is righteous. God is just. Oh... one boy did say, God is Omniscient. :) So we started out with some descriptions of a perfect God.
Then I asked the kids to tell me about some of man's imperfections. At first the room was quiet... and I said, now I bet you all have heard of the "S" word before... and as I glanced out at the urban inner city kids, I quickly clarified that I was talking about "SIN." (Whew, be careful using letter abbreviations with inner city kids, they words they know might really surprise you, and probably don't need to be shared out loud in Bible study!) So, we talked about, what is sin? When you fail to live up to God's standard in life. When you fail to be perfect. That was a bit lofty, so I gave some examples. Has anyone in here ever told a lie? Ever cheated? Ever coveted? Those things are sins. And, I also hit on idolatry. I'd love to have had more time to let them sit and think about that, but I just said, any time we love something more than we love God, that becomes an Idol. I said, most of us here don't bow down and worship little statues, but we do love other things more than God, and that's idolatry. So, if you love your car and care about it more than Jesus, it can be an Idol. Or if you love money more than you love Jesus, that can become an idol. When I said money can be an idol, one boy said money's not bad, we need money to live! And I said, I know, you are right, money itself is not bad, it's only when we care more about money than Jesus that it becomes an idol.
At this point I had kids read some verses about God being perfect.
"This God, his way is Perfect - the word of the Lord proves true; he is a sheild for all those who take refuge in Him." 2 Samuel 22:31, Psalm 18:30
"The Rock, his work is Perfect, for all his ways are justice. A God of faithfulness and without iniquity, just and upright is He." Deut. 32:4
And I said, Why do we need God to be perfect? Why is it important that we see that Jesus is perfect?
And we starting going deeper, and I tried to keep it simple, but well, who knows what they understood of what we said, what seeds will grow.
Because for our sins to be forgiven and wiped clean before a Perfect and Holy God, we need A PERFECT SACRIFICE.
Now, looking back I wish I had been better able to explain this, only 15 minutes sheesh! I said, back in Old Testament times, guess what the priests had to do before they could come to God? They had to offer sacrifices. (This was a new concept I think to these kids, at least some of them, because they asked, isn't killing wrong? Why would God want us to kill an animal?) I said, do you remember the story of Abraham and Isaac? (I really thought we did teach that story last semester, but you know, if we did, that might have been the only time those kids had heard it, and by now maybe they had forgotten it, they knew the names of them...) I said, so Abraham was this really really old guy, like 100! And he didn't have any kids, but God promised him he would have one even though he was WAY TOO OLD to have kids, and then his wife had his son Isaac. But the strange thing that happened was, God said, Abraham, I need you to sacrifice Isaac to me. So they go out and prepare to offer a sacrifice to God, and Isaac's like, dude, dad, what's up, where's the animal here? And a student read Genesis 22:8. "Abraham said, God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son." So, I told the kids, Abraham got everything ready and was just about to offer Isaac as a sacrifice, when God interrupts and says Abraham, there's a ram over in the bushes, sacrifice that ram instead. Then we read Leviticus 22:21 "and when anyone offers a sacrifice of peace offerings to the Lord... to be accepted it must be perfect; there shall be no blemish in it." Then a student read John 1:29, where John the Baptist shouts "Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!" about Jesus.
Yes this is very weighty and meaty. I said, the story of Abraham and Isaac shows us, we are in need of a Perfect Sacrifice, God provided a ram in that moment, but humanity needed something more. And so He provided Jesus, who happens to be the ONLY PERFECT PERSON WHO EVER LIVED! And therefore the ONLY one who could be the perfect sacrifice for our sins. And we talked about how we all have friends, but our friends aren't perfect, if they died, their death would only meet the punishment for their own sin. And wow, this is taking them deeper still... Our Salvation is Based on God's Grace at the Cross, He offered Jesus as a Perfect Sacrifice to pay for our sins! Last week's Bible verse was actually Ephesians 2:8- "for it is by Grace you have been saved, through faith - and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God." I said, this is soooooo great! We could never be perfect ourselves, we can never be good enough to earn our salvation, so God provided His Son to make our salvation possible! And that is not only amazing, it distinguishes Christianity from every other religion in the world! I told these kids, every other religion out there that exists tells you you have to EARN your way into heaven, by doing good deeds, by praying enough times, by trying to be a good person... but followers of Jesus, we can rejoice because our salvation is based on the cross of Christ alone, the free gift of grace! Whoohoo for the Gospel! Thank you Jesus! And I had a student read Revelation 5:9 - "And they sang a new song, saying, "Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open it's seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation." I said, this is a picture of heaven, all the angels are rejoicing because only Jesus was worthy! (actually the child only read half of the verse outloud, but that's okay, we were already in way deeper than most of these kids have ever gone.)
So we read 1 John 4:12
"No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us."
Hebrews 10:14
"For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified."
Matthew 5:48
"You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect."
So we said, three responses we can have to this lesson: love God, love people, even our enemies!, and also, love the Bible, God's truth, His Word, that has this incredible power to transform our lives. I mean, a few kids told me they read the Bible at home in the week, but most of them admitted they don't, and... I want them to start reading and seeing this for themselves!
We worked on the memory verse which was the verse the lesson started with. And then I prayed for the lesson and God's truth to sink in to our hearts, and for God to bless our dinner.
The kids listened to what I had to say. I don't know how much connected for them. I kept saying, "Why does this matter?" Because I know how I am, if I don't understand why it's important that God be Perfect, or that Jesus lived a perfect life, then it's just a trite phrase without meaning. But that truth, when you start unfolding it, it reveals the Gospel and it's so amazing! Which... even if the lesson was "over their heads..." in one sense, I think it was good to challenge these kids with some depth in thinking about God. I mean, truth, God is deep, and the more you get to know Him, the deeper you go. The gospel is so simple yet amazing and profound and... it's good. God is Good.
Our culture is very superficial in understanding our world. Consumerism and materialism (with the aid and indoctrination of the box called television...) are choking depth away... and too often we're never challenged to go deep. So, if I could help a few children, plant some seeds that give them a thirst and desire to go deeper, to see the Truth of the gospel is deeper, and is more relevant than we often realize... and meaty and real and good to dive into... then the Holy Spirit used me in a very gracious way. But really, I'm glad that I was able to stop and reflect on the truth of God's perfection this week, and allow it to lead me to the foot of the cross. That's what it's about, remembering the Gospel. God's grace is great, indeed.