Magnified! VBS

Magnified! VBS

Zooming in to discover the bigness of God

in the smallest of things.

·        When we magnify something we focus in on it to make it bigger to us

 Psalm 34:3 (ESV) Oh, magnify the LORD with me, and let us exalt his name together!

(MULTILINE)

·        Friday Ms. Noemi shared that God created everything there is, and yet He still wants to spend time with you.

o   You are important to God. He sees you. He knows everything about you.

·        Saturday, Mr James talked about God’s Care: God keeps the whole universe going, and yet He still cares about what’s happening to you.

o   You can trust God to take care of you because God cares about you.

(MULTILINE)

·        Sometimes you’re too close and you have to zoom out to get the big picture

o   Today we’re going to zoom out to see the big picture of all of VBS: God loves you!

·       Today’s Bible story happened at night. Nicodemus was a religious leader who came to visit Jesus

John 3:1–8, 16-17 (NLT)

 ¹ There was a man named Nicodemus, a Jewish religious leader who was a Pharisee. ² After dark one evening, he came to speak with Jesus. “Rabbi,” he said, “we all know that God has sent you to teach us. Your miraculous signs are evidence that God is with you.”

·       So God is with you, but are you the savior we’ve been looking for? Or a fake?

³ Jesus replied, “I tell you the truth, unless you are born again, you cannot see the Kingdom of God.”

⁴ “What do you mean?” exclaimed Nicodemus. “How can an old man go back into his mother’s womb and be born again?”

⁵ Jesus replied, “I assure you, no one can enter the Kingdom of God without being born of water and the Spirit.⁶ Humans can reproduce only human life, but the Holy Spirit gives birth to spiritual life.⁷ So don’t be surprised when I say, ‘You must be born again.’

(MULTILINE)

·        Jesus told Nicodemus, “Unless someone is born a second time – born SPIRITUALLY – they will not see God’s kingdom.”

·        Which means we can’t really get to know God (unless we’re born spiritually)

o   You might know ABOUT God, but that’s not the same as knowing Him

·        Who’s a famous person a lot of people know about? Maybe Trevor Lawrence or Harriet Tubman?

o   Can you tell me about them? (MULTILINE)

o   Do  you know them? Are you friends?

·        God wants to be friends with you because he loves you so much

o   He doesn’t just want you to know a lot ABOUT him

·        Jesus told us that’s why Father God sent him – so you and I can know him and be with him always

(MULTILINE)

¹⁶ “For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.

·       Jesus came to pay the price to buy us out of slavery to sin

·       Without believing in Jesus, we don’t even have a choice – sin MAKES US do things that pull us away from God.

§  But if you know that Jesus, because he died on the cross and rose again, paid the price…

§  Then you know you don’t have to live that way!

o   Because of Jesus you don’t have to obey sin anymore. You get to choose friendship with God! And you can know God and know how much he loves you

(MULTILINE)

¹⁷ God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but to save the world through him.”

·       God didn’t sin Jesus to yell at us because we are sinners

·       But to let us know he loves us and we don’t have to live that way anymore

o   Jesus gives us a choice we never had before – to be friends with God

·       You can pray this (or something like it) to become God’s friend

Jesus

Thank you for dying on the cross

to buy me out of slavery to sin

So I don’t have to do bad things anymore.

Come into me now, and give me a new spiritual life

So I will be your friend –

and Father God’s friend –

forever. Amen

(MULTILINE)