Archives by: Stacey Gish

Material:
– Tarnished silver bowl
– Napkin dipped in plain water
– Silver cleaner and cloth
– Bible (John 3:16)

The Message:
Good morning! Thanks for coming down this morning. Does anyone have one of these in their house? (Hold up silver bowl) I bet your Grandma has some of these around the house, too. This is silver and silver is very delicate. You need a lot of time and patience to take care of silver. As you can tell, I haven’t taken very good care of my silver. It’s all dirty and tarnished. What if I tried to take this napkin and wash the dirt off? (Demonstrate this) The dirt does not come off. Silver takes a very special polish to take the tarnish off. (Demonstrate this) See, with this special polish, the tarnish came right off. People get dirty, too. What word do we use for that? (Children respond: “Sin”) That’s right. We all sin in some way because we are human. But who cleans our sin away? (Children respond: “Jesus”) That’s right. Jesus died on the cross to take away our sins. Jesus is our special silver cleaner! Anytime that we make mistakes in our lives, we can pray to Jesus to take our sins away. People pray for many things, but we mostly pray for Jesus to forgive us of our sins. And everytime we pray and ask, he will! After I completely clean this silver bowl, the tarnish will soon come back. So I have to remember to clean in often. We also have to remember to talk to Jesus everyday so that our tarnish won’t come back. There’s a Bible verse that we probably all have memorized that will help us remember that Jesus died for our sins. It’s John 3:16. Let’s say it together. Let’s thank God for sending His Son to us to forgive us of our sins. Pray with me…

Material:
– 2 different canned fruits/vegetables
– tape
– New Testament (Galatians 5:22-23)

Preparation:
Carefully tear away the labels of both cans. You will use only one can during the sermon. Temporarily tape one label to the can. Prepare the other label with tape for use during the sermon.

The Message:
Good morning! I’m glad to see you all this morning. Can anyone tell me what this is? (Hold up the can as the children respond: “Peaches!”) Well, how do you know it’s peaches? (Children respond, “It says so on the can!”) Oh, yeah, I guess it does say that on the label. What if I took the label off? (Remove label) Now, what’s in here? (Children respond: “It’s still peaches.”) Well, what if I put this label on the can (Attach second label). I guess now it’s pears. (Children respond: “No! It’s still peaches!”) Still peaches? No, it’s not. I put the pears label on the outside, so it’s pears now, right? (Older children will put up a good argument, so try to control the noise!) So, what you’re trying to tell me is no matter what it says on the outside, the ingredients stay the same on the inside? Oh, okay, I get it now. So we shouldn’t make fun of people just because they wear glasses or braces or have freckles? I know a good Bible verse that goes along with that. Help me find Galatians chapter 5, verse 22. Paul gave us nine ingredients that really matter: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness and self-control. Those ingredients are on the inside of people. We shouldn’t care about what’s on the outside because everyone’s different in some way.But we all should remember these nine things: love – we need to show love to everyone, joy – we should be happy because Jesus loves us! peace – don’t pick fights, patience – I need to work on this one! kindness – be kind to everyone you meet, goodness – be good for your parents and teachers, gentleness – be gentle with everyone, faithfulness – we need to have faith that Jesus always is there for us, and self-control – we need to control our tongues sometimes and our actions other times. Let’s pray that God will help us work on these traits.