Before I explain the children's sermon, there is a little bit of background. Our pastor announced 3 weeks ago that he and his family have been reassigned churches and that they will be moving this summer. Last week, it was announced who had been appointed to our church. Since the announcement, there has been questions about the new pastor and his family. I hadn't worked on children's sermon very hard this week, but for some reason I wasn't worried about it. Saturday night around 10:30, it came to me and in about 15 minutes, I had everything pulled together. My mom had presented a Children's Sermon similar to this over 20 years ago and that made it all fit together easily.
(Prep work before church- I took my Bible cover and removed my Bible and found a book close in size - it happened to be a cookbook and put it in the cover I also have a Bible that is pink with a brown stripe and a notebook that is very similar but is blue with a stripe - I took all of these with me to church on Sunday)
I welcomed the kids and asked how they were, then I said that I had something very important to talk to them about. I asked one boy, who I knew could easily accomplish the task, to look up Matthew 7:1 using my Bible (and I handed him, my Bible cover with the cookbook inside) He unzipped the cover and flipped it open and then I got this very stunned look. I asked him if he had the verse and he said "no- it's not here" Of course it is , I replied. "No this isn't a Bible it's a cookbook" "Now that can't be - it's in my Bible carrier, of course it is a Bible, let me see" (To which I look at the boy and said April Fool's since it happened to be so close to April 1st) I then talked to the kids about how they all knew that it was a Bible carrier and they all knew what should have been inside, but it wasn't. Then I held up my 2 striped books and asked which one of them might be a Bible. After a close look they found the correct book. We then read Matthew 7:1-2 - "Do not Judge, or you too will be judged...."
I explained that we were going to have a new pastor and (very sarcastically) "oh the things that I had heard" "I heard that he rides a motorcycle and you know what that means - we will have a Black Leather Sunday where everyone has to wear leather." "or do you know what else I heard, I heard that he likes to hunt, which means that he won't be here the Sunday after Thanksgiving because he will be at hunting camp." And about that time, the one of the girls spoke up and said "We aren't suppose to judge". (I was so excited that she had picked up on this!!!) I answered you are correct, and that is what I want us to remember, that if we are going to judge the new pastor and his family by what they are wearing or by what they enjoy then we need to remember that maybe they might be judging us the same way. So when we get to meet our new pastor and family, we need to remember to not judge the book by it's cover but take the time to get to know him and learn about his heart and his love for Jesus.
We then closed in prayer.
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