(happy music) -[Narrator reads title]
So part of God’s Story is about the Gospel, or “the Good News,” and it goes like this.
In the beginning, God made everything:
the sun, the moon, stars, planets, the entire galaxy!
And Earth was part of that creation. (happy music)
God made mountains and oceans and forests and deserts,
and animals that crawled on the ground (footsteps) and flew in the air (birds chirping)
and swam in the water. (bubbles)
Then he made people, Adam and Eve, to live in a garden called Eden,
and God called everything he had made good.
There was just one rule: Adam and Eve could eat anything they wanted
except for the fruit from this one tree.
But a snake tricked Adam and Eve into disobeying that one rule.
Because of that, sickness (nose blows), sadness, and
all kinds of bad things (buzzing) came into God’s perfect creation.
All because people made wrong choices.
Part of how God punished Adam and Eve was by
not allowing them in the perfect Garden anymore.
(rain and thunder) And if that were the end of the story,
that would be bad news for us.
That would mean all the wrong stuff in the world would never be made right.
But God still loved people — and he had good news for them!
He was going to send a Rescuer.
So they waited. (clock ticking)
And waited.
Then one day, the Rescuer was born,
as a baby,
named Jesus!
Christmas is when we celebrate the good news of Jesus being born.
But it’s not just that he was born -- it’s what he did later
that was the best news of all.
(strong wind) He took the punishment for all the wrong choices
that anyone has ever made -- anywhere!
See, all of us have continued to make wrong choices, just like Adam and Eve did.
And just like Adam and Eve, we deserve to be punished for our wrong choices.
But here’s the thing.
Jesus, the Rescuer, never made a single bad choice.
Kids, think about a time you made a bad choice,
maybe telling a lie, or taking something that wasn’t yours,
or hurting another person with something you did or said.
Can you believe that whatever that was -- Jesus never made a choice like that,
and even though He never made a bad choice,
he still took the punishment for our wrong choices?
And then Jesus did something even more completely unexpected:
he came back to life!
Really.
You can read about it in the Bible, (thuds open)
in the stories written by (pages fluttering) Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
We call those books “gospels,” (thuds closed) which is just an old fancy word for
you guessed it
the good news of Jesus coming to earth, dying for our wrong choices,
and coming back to life.
That’s what we celebrate on Easter
but not just because coming back to life is totally amazing.
By coming back to life, Jesus was showing that
God can make anything new.
There’s nothing God can’t do. He’s more powerful than
any sadness, shame, wrong choice, disease, disaster, and even death.
And that’s the best, most amazing good news of all.
(chatter) It’s so amazing, Jesus’s friends told
everyone they could find about the Good News.
And those people told other people.
And those people told other people, and on and on...
and that’s still happening today.
In fact, you just heard the Good News and
the Bible says, (thuds open and Narrator clears throat)
That’s another way to say God rescues us.
And that Rescue includes you, your friends, your family,
and anyone else in the whole world!
And that's the story of the Good News.
So in case you missed it, here’s the quick version.
God made a perfect world.
People made mistakes and the world isn’t perfect anymore.
God promised his family a Rescuer.
The Rescuer’s name is Jesus.
Jesus died to take a punishment we deserve.
But he didn’t stay dead!
Jesus came back to life.
Because Jesus can make anything new.
And that's a part of God’s Story.
(happy music continues)