MMLJ - Before We Need It

A month is a long time, I know, but how many of you remember when we learned about Ruth last month? I sure do. I’m thinking especially of the story where Ruth found the perfect field at the perfect time so that she could get food for her and her mother-in-law, Naomi. We learned in that story that God always knows how He’s going to take care of us, even if it’s through things that seem ordinary – like friends or family helping us out when we need it.

But sometimes God provides for us through miraculous ways – through things or events that seem impossible. Or maybe even are impossible. But that’s what’s so amazing about our God! He can do the impossible to make sure we always have what we need.

That’s what today’s story is all about! We’re going to be talking about a time where God provided for not just one person, not just the 12 disciples, but for over 5000 people! And, as so many stories in the New Testament do, our story begins with Jesus.

You see, Jesus travelled around a lot. He would walk all over the countryside talking to people, healing people, and teaching them about what it means to follow God. And over time, Jesus gained a pretty big reputation. People would come from all over Israel, and some even from outside of Israel, just to hear what Jesus had to say!

So by this point, Jesus was pretty used to having people follow Him around and listen to Him. And He would probably spend a large chunk of his day just standing on a rock or something and teaching these huge crowds.

This day was no different. The Bible tells us that Jesus had been teaching for a while that day, but now He told His disciples that it was time for them to try and find some peace and quiet for a bit. So, they hopped into a boat and went to the other side of a lake (Mark 6:30-31, NIrV).

Problem is, the people wanted to hear more from Jesus. So they raced to the other side of the lake as fast as they could. So when Jesus and His disciples arrived on the other side of the lake, there was another huge crowd waiting!

Now I’m sure some of the disciples were thinking, Great… So much for our rest and relaxation. Maybe some of them even tried to shoo a few of the people away or talk Jesus into wearing a disguise.

But that wasn’t Jesus’ plan. Jesus looked at these people and felt compassion for them. He knew that these people “were like sheep without a shepherd” (Mark 6:34). This means that these people didn’t really know how they were supposed to live and were looking for answers. And Jesus, He had those answers and didn’t want to send them away without letting them hear something. So, tired and hungry as they all were, Jesus began to preach.

As always, the people were amazed! They sat there for hours, listening to Jesus talk about the kingdom of heaven and what it really means to believe in God. Jesus probably said some things they didn’t understand as well – like that believing in Him was the only way that they could get to God – but this just made the people want to listen to Jesus even more to get the answers to their questions!  

But eventually, the disciples had had enough. Their stomachs were starting to growl and they were tired of sitting in the hot sun all day listening to a guy talk, even if this was the best teacher they’d ever heard! So Philip and a few of the other disciples went up to Jesus and said, “Hey, umm… Sorry to interrupt Jesus, but it’s getting pretty late. Don’t you think it’s time to send the people away so they can get some food to eat before their journeys home?”

And Jesus, in typical Jesus style, just smiled and said, “You give them something to eat.”

This is probably a good time to mention how big this crowd was. I said over 5000 people earlier, but the Bible tells us that that number only includes the men. There were women and children in this massive crowd too. This means that the crowd was probably closer to having 20 000 people in it!

So when Jesus told the disciples to just give this massive crowd something to eat, a few of the disciples probably laughed and thought Jesus was making a joke. But then Jesus turned to keep on teaching. At which point, Philip, eyes widening, grabbed Jesus by the shoulder and said, “Wait, you’re serious? Jesus, there’s way too many people here! Even if we were able to buy enough bread for each person to have just a bit, that would take more than half a year’s pay! We can’t afford that!” (John 6:7).

At this, Jesus’ smile started to fade. He might have even looked a little disappointed. “Well, I guess we can go and look for some food,” one of the disciples said. And so, as Jesus kept on teaching, the disciples went into the crowd and started asking for food.

Maybe 15 minutes later, the disciples came back with a boy from the crowd and said to Jesus, “Alright, this boy here is willing to give us the dinner his mom packed for him. That’ll give us five loaves of bread and two fish. But what good will that do all these people?”

I’d like to think that this little exchange made Jesus really excited. Jesus knew as well as the boy did that this small amount of food wouldn’t be enough to feed all these people. But the boy was still willing to share his dinner anyways!

But Jesus already knew what He was going to do. So, thanking the boy, he told the disciples to separate the crowd of people into groups of 50’s and 100’s. And the disciples, confused as ever, did just that!

After all the people were organized, the Bible tells us that Jesus looked to heaven and gave thanks to God. And then Jesus broke the bread and fish into pieces and gave them to the disciples to give to the people. And everybody ate and was satisfied. And when everyone was finished eating, there were 12 baskets full of leftover bread and fish (Luke 9:15-17).

Now let’s pause right there. We can easily read that last bit and miss the incredible thing that just happened. All the Bible tells us is that Jesus divided up the food and everyone had enough. That’s it. Like it’s normal to make 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish feed around 20 000 people.

I don’t know about you, but I find it pretty tough to imagine what this miracle would have looked like. When Jesus heals blind men by spitting in their eyes or tells a person’s who’s never walked to get up and they suddenly can, we can picture what that would have looked like. But trying to imagine this story is a little harder. So let’s try to imagine together.

Maybe Jesus had everyone close their eyes and bow their heads to pray. And after He gave thanks for the food, everybody looked up and there were piles of bread and fish, more than that crowd could possibly imagine, surrounding Jesus.

Or maybe it worked a little different. Maybe every time Jesus broke a loaf of bread or a fish in half, the halves instantly grew back to full size. This way, Jesus could just keep breaking bread and always have enough to hand out.

Or maybe it took a little longer for the miracle to get going. Maybe after Jesus finished praying, he gave 10 of the disciples half a loaf of bread and the other 2 the fish and told them to start handing out the food. And as the disciples went to the different groups of 50’s and 100’s, they were ripping off tiny little pieces. These pieces wouldn’t have been nearly enough food to feed anyone, but that’s all the food they had, so the disciples were trying to be fair and give everyone a crumb.

Anyways, let’s say Philip finished first. Philip goes back to Jesus, bummed because a lot of people haven’t eaten yet, when all of a sudden Jesus hands him another half a loaf of bread. That’s weird, Philip thought, but maybe Jesus found someone else willing to share their food.

So once again, Philip is ripping off tiny pieces of bread to hand out to people. He’s shocked to see that some of the other disciples haven’t finished handing out their food yet. Wait, is that Andrew over there with a full loaf of bread and a fish? How did that happen?

Anyways, Philip goes back to Jesus a second time, who now hands Philip two loaves of bread. Philip’s mouth drops. Where’s all this food coming from? The next time, Jesus not only hands Philip another three loaves of bread and a fish, but there’s a small pile of food behind Jesus that He’s grabbing from.

That pile of food is a little bit bigger every time a disciple goes back to Jesus. And before you know it, there’s a mountain of food that Jesus is taking from. And the disciples, they’re carrying around baskets full of bread, chucking loaves out to everyone in the crowd, crying, “You get a loaf! You get a loaf! EVERYBODY GETS A LOAF!!!!” And like the Bible says, after everybody had eaten and was satisfied, the disciples returned to Jesus and had 12 baskets full of leftovers.

Or maybe this miracle happened a different way. Honestly, I have no idea, and I’m not even sure that it matters exactly how it happened. But what does matter is that God provided for these hungry people. They were hungry, and God made sure that they received exactly what they needed.

That’s something that we can trust God will do for us too. God knows exactly what we need before we need it. Many of these people probably didn’t think to bring food for the day. Actually, many of them might not have known they were going to hear Jesus that morning. This was long before the days of the Internet where people could just look up the next place a major teacher was going to teach. But even though these people didn’t have a lot of food, God gave them exactly what they needed to help keep them alive.

Not only that, but Jesus gave them something even more important that day than food. He gave them the teaching that these people needed! Jesus helped these “lost sheep” to find their way and discover that He is the only way that we can get to God. No amount of rule following will get us any closer to God. The only way we can be saved from those bad things we’ve done and have a relationship with God is if we trust in Jesus.

That’s something pretty amazing. God knows exactly what we need before we need it. This includes food, shelter, and also Himself. And for that, we should be truly thankful!

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That’s all for today! If you want to read the actual passages this story comes from, check out Matthew 14:13-21, Mark 6:30-44, Luke 9:10-17, and John 6:1-15. As for next week, we’ll be diving into a longer story, one that will take us the entire month of May. So I hope you’ll come back next week when we dive into the life of Daniel!

~Brentagious

2 Kings 22-23 - Finding a Reminder

Have you ever forgotten something that was super important? Like a friend’s birthday or a big test that you forgot to study for? Believe me, I forget things like that all the time. So when I know there’s something really important that I have to remember, I make sure I write a reminder somewhere. That way, I can look at a piece of paper or some message on my phone and know exactly the stuff I need to remember.

But just because something gets written down doesn’t mean that a reminder is foolproof. Stuff can still go wrong. You could accidentally drop your phone in a puddle and lose all those reminders. Or if you’re still using good, old fashioned paper, it could get lost in a pile of other papers. Or accidentally get recycled. Or get stapled to the back of your math homework, never to be seen again!

Well, if something like this has ever happened to you, then today’s story is perfect for you. Today, we’re going to be learning about a guy named Josiah and how he found probably the most important reminder of all time! Well, he didn’t actually find it himself… He has people for that. After all, Josiah was a king.

And quite an interesting king at that. You see, Josiah became king when he was only 8 years old! When I was 8, I was stuck in school learning how to spell words, respect animals, and starting on my times tables. But here Josiah was ruling an entire kingdom!

This kingdom was the kingdom of Judah. Judah was a small kingdom that had split off from the kingdom of Israel a long time before Josiah ever started to rule. And good thing too, because Israel had been taken over by this people called the Assyrians and didn’t really exist anymore. As for Judah, they weren’t in great shape either. The people of Judah had stopped listening to God a long time ago, so God had been warning them that soon the kingdom of Judah would be destroyed, just like Israel had been.

Part of the problem here was that most of the kings of Judah hadn’t been good people. They worshipped idols – false gods – and cared more about themselves than following the one true God. In fact, the Bible tells us that these kings “did what was evil in the eyes of the LORD.” And when the people saw their king disobeying God and doing whatever he wanted, they thought they could do whatever they wanted too!

This wasn’t the case for Josiah, though. The Bible tells us that Josiah was like David, a good king who did right in the eyes of the LORD and obeyed what God told him to do. Now we don’t get to see a lot of what Josiah did in the early part of his reign, but what we do see shows that Josiah was a good king who cared for his people.

When Josiah was 26 years old, he sent some people to fix up the temple where the people worshipped God. I said before that the people of Judah had been worshipping idols for a long time now, so God’s temple wasn’t in the best shape anymore. But Josiah was going to change that. He trusted these builders to do their jobs well, to be honest, and to get the temple back up and running the way it should be.

But Josiah got a little more than he bargained for. See, while these builders were out there repairing things, I’m sure that the priests were still trying to worship God however they could. But that would be tough when there are a bunch of guys lifting giant stone blocks and 2 x 4’s all around you.

Anyways, the high priest – that’s the priest in charge of all the other priests – at this time was named Hilkiah, and he found something pretty important while all this temple repair work was going on. Maybe the builders had put a hole in one of the walls, maybe they had emptied out one of the storage rooms for the first time in years, I don’t know… But somewhere in this half-rebuilt temple, Hilkiah found an old book.

He saw the book and picked it up. I wonder what this is, he thought. It’s super dusty. Maybe some priest from years ago wrote down some of the stuff going on while he served in the temple! He blew on the cover. Dust scattered everywhere and Hilkiah coughed a few times. But after the dust settled down, he opened the cover and started to read. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth…”

Hilkiah’s eyes widened. He slammed the book shut and clutched it to his chest. Then he ran over to Shaphan, Josiah’s secretary and the guy overseeing this whole rebuilding project. Shaphan probably laughed a little bit, thinking, I don’t think I’ve ever seen one of the priests run like that!

Hilkiah was shaking as he held the book out in front of him. His throat was dry. “I’ve found the Book of the Law!” he finally croaked, as tears came to his eyes.

Now let’s stop right there. Some of you might be thinking, “What’s the big deal? I’ve heard that opening sentence before. That’s how the Bible starts!”

But that’s exactly the point. At some point in Israel’s history, between the evil kings and the worshipping of all those idols, the people of Israel and Judah had lost their Bible. They didn’t live in an age where making books was easy or where they could just look on the Internet if they wanted to look up a Bible passage. And sure, the priests knew the stories of Creation and Abraham and Moses and could tell the stories to the people, but this was the first time a priest had seen a written copy of those stories and the laws God had given to Israel in a really long time! Finding the Book of the Law was a huge deal!

Anyways, Shaphan and Hilkiah brought the Book of the Law back to Josiah and read some of it to him. But the more Shaphan read, the more Josiah got upset. And when Shaphan finished, Josiah was so sad and so angry that he tore his robes. Back in Bible times, this was a sign that someone was deeply angry or deeply sorry about something.

See, finding this Book of the Law was like finding the reminder of how God wanted His people to live. And when Josiah heard all of these laws, all he could think about was how the people of Judah had been breaking these commandments left and right. They had been disobeying God in so many different ways, and the worst part was that many of the Israelites probably didn’t even realize that some of the stuff they were doing was wrong!

“Quickly,” Josiah said to Hilkiah and Shaphan. “Go. Ask the LORD for advice. Ask him about what is written in this book that has been found. Do it for me. Also do it for the people and the whole nation of Judah. The LORD is very angry with us. That’s because our people who have lived before us didn’t obey the words of this book. They didn’t do everything written there about us” (2 Kings 22:13, NIrV).

Well off they went. Hilkiah found a prophet named Huldah and gave him Josiah’s message. And Huldah’s response was one of those “good news, bad news” kind of things. Huldah said that God was angry, like Josiah guessed. And God was still going to bring punishment on the people of Judah like He had promised for so many years. But because Josiah had humbled himself and cried out to God for help on what to do, God was going to wait to send that punishment until long after Josiah and his family had lived and died.

But Josiah didn’t just stop with feeling bad. He didn’t breathe a sigh of relief and say, “Glad that’s over with.” No, now that Josiah had this reminder of how the people of Judah were supposed to live, he wasn’t going to let things just continue like they had before. So he gathered up all the people, “from the least important to the most important,” and had the Book of the Law read out to all of them! And when that was done, Josiah agreed again to all the laws and promises that God had made with Israel long ago.

And then… Well, Josiah went on a cleaning spree. Not only did Josiah finish rebuilding the temple, but he got rid of all the temples and places of worship for those false idols in Judah. He sent out teams to destroy every idol they could find and tear down any decorations in the kingdom that didn’t honour God. The kingdom of Judah destroyed every statue, every carving, and every place of worship that was involved in worshipping anything other than the one true God.

Finally, Josiah did something with the people that hadn’t been done in a long time. They celebrated the Passover. This was a feast where the people remembered how God had saved them from death and from slavery way back in Moses’ time.

With that, Josiah completely transformed Judah. For the first time in a long time, Judah was worshipping God and only God. And the Bible praises Josiah quite highly for pulling this off, saying, “There was no king like Josiah either before him or after him. None of them turned to the LORD as he did. He obeyed the LORD with all his heart and all his soul. He obeyed him with all his strength. He did everything the Law of Moses required” (2 Kings 23:25).

Sadly, though, things didn’t stay this way forever. Josiah might have been a good king, but he eventually died. And these new kings ended up being just as evil as the other kings had been. And soon, Judah was back to worshipping idols and disobeying God, even though they had the law again. And because the people kept disobeying God, God sent the Babylonians to take over Judah about 20 years after Josiah’s death…

It’s sad, because unlike all these other kings, Josiah got it. When Josiah was reminded that the people of Judah had been disobeying God, he immediately changed what was wrong so that the people could do right again. He understood our lesson for today: Get rid of what’s wrong when God reminds you of what’s right.

As Christians, though, we have something even better than the Book of the Law to remind us of what’s wrong and right. When we believe in Jesus and ask Him to forgive us for our sins, we get to enter into a relationship with God. And because of that relationship, God gives us the strength to actually do those right things. And there’s no reminder more important than that.

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That’s all for today’s post. Sorry for the delay. I’m on vacation right now and kind of forgot to post yesterday. Ironic that, I know. But we should be back to our regularly scheduled Thursday posts next week. Hope you’ll check it out then!

~Brentagious

Isaiah 53 - Extra, Extra, Read all About it!

Up here in Canada, we get pretty excited about hockey. I get that it’s not everybody’s sport (and between you and me, I don’t watch or play too much myself), but I remember being really in to watching hockey games as a kid. Now I’m a home town boy, meaning I cheer for everyone’s favourite team: the Toronto Maple Leafs. And wouldn’t you know it, we’ve actually made it into the playoffs for a change!

But back when Toronto used to make the playoffs every year (like, when I was a kid), I remember staying up super late to watch their games. And it was great! We’d be sitting on the edge of our seats the entire time, waiting to find out who was going to win. And if the game went into overtime, our nerves went through the roof. But honestly, there were times where I just wanted to know what the score was going to be so I didn’t have to deal with all the pressure!

Now some of you might be saying that knowing the score takes all the fun out of watching a game. And honestly, you’re right. But imagine for a minute that something like that happened. Imagine after the Boston Bruins beat the Ottawa Senators 2-1 last night, the announcers said, “And now, to end off tonight’s broadcast, let’s fill you in on what tomorrow night’s scores are going to be!”

I figure there’d be three main reactions to this. Some people might be angry that the score was spoiled for them and not even bother tuning in the next night. Others might be thankful that they could watch the game without any pressure. But I’m sure most people would say, “Yeah right! You can’t predict the future! There’s no way that score’s going to be right!”

So, you tune in for tonight’s game, laughing at the silly sport’s announcers who think they can predict the future. But at the end of the game, you’re not laughing anymore. When the final buzzer sounds, you see that the announcers got the score right!

Must be a coincidence, you think. Or a lucky guess. So you quickly turn to the end of the other game being played at that time and what do you see? The announcers got that right too! In fact, by the end of the night, you see that the announcers correctly predicted all four games! Talk about amazing! After getting four scores right, you’d have a much bigger reason to believe those guys if they predicted scores again for future games!

But that’s now how sports announcers work… Their job (like historians or newspaper writers) is to tell you about things that are happening or have happened. They can make guesses about the future, but their job is to tell you about the past! There’s nothing mind blowing about that in and of itself. But if you came across a sports station or a history book or a newspaper that told you 100% of the time exactly what was going to happen in the future, I bet you’d be pretty amazed. I certainly would be!

But what if I told you that this kind of thing happens in the Bible? That there were people who could tell you what was going to happen in the future like it was yesterday’s news or sports scores?

There was a special name for these kind of people in the Bible: prophets. Prophets were people who were chosen by God to deliver messages to others. Many of these messages were warnings to the people of Israel. God would send a prophet to tell the Israelites that if they continued to worship other gods and disobey the one true God, then God would punish the Israelites. But other times, the prophets gave messages about things that were going to happen in the future!

Now there are lots of famous prophets in the Bible, but I want to focus on one prophecy from one particular prophet today. This prophet was named Isaiah, and his prophecies fill one of the longest books in the Bible. And the prophecy I want to talk about is found in Isaiah 53. 

Here, Isaiah tells us that God was going to send a servant to the Israelites. This servant was going to look like a normal, everyday person. “There wasn’t anything special about the way he looked that drew us to him” (Isaiah 53:2, NIrV). In fact, Isaiah said that the Israelites were actually going to look down on this servant, laugh at him, be mean to him, and ignore him!

Not only that, but Isaiah said this servant was going to suffer. He was going to take “on himself the pain that should have been ours” (Isaiah 53:4). He was going to be pierced (poked with sharp sticks) and crushed “because we had sinned” (53:5). Did you catch that? God’s servant wasn’t going to be punished for anything bad he had done; he was going to be punished – killed – for all of us who have done wrong things (53:8).

Isaiah then says that this was always God’s plan. This means that from the beginning of time, from long before Adam and Eve sinned (like we talked about last week) or any of us had sinned, God knew that He was going to send this servant to suffer and die so that every single one of our sins could be forgiven.

But thankfully, that’s not the end of the message! Isaiah finishes this prophecy by saying that that even though God’s servant is going to die and be punished for our sins, the servant will be brought back to life (53:10-11)! And when that happens, the punishment and death we deserve for all those bad things we’ve done will be taken care of. We won’t need to be punished or die for our sins anymore because God’s suffering servant did that for us!

There’s just one problem though. This was a prophecy, meaning that Isaiah was talking about something that hadn’t happened yet. Isaiah wasn’t talking about a servant who had already been born; he was talking about someone God was going to send in the future! But nobody knew when this servant was supposed to come or what he would look like! Then what reason do we have to believe that this servant has come or ever even will come?

Well, just like we would only trust a sports announcer to tell us about the future if he actually got the scores right, the best way for us to know if a prophecy is true is if the things in that prophecy actually happen. And SPOILER ALERT, everything Isaiah said about this suffering servant has already come true!

Time for a quick history lesson. The 66 books of the Bible were written over a really long time by a bunch of different people. The books of the New Testament were written around 1900 years ago, while the books of the Old Testament are even older than that! In fact, people who have studied the Bible a lot longer than me mostly agree that the book of Isiah was written between 2400 and 2500 years ago! That’s 400-500 years before Jesus was ever born!

Why does that matter? Well, that suffering servant Isaiah was talking about is Jesus! The Bible tells us that Jesus was wise and strong (Luke 2:52) and an amazing teacher, but He is never described as being super handsome or standing out in a crowd for His looks.

Not only that, but Jesus was constantly being made fun of or looked down on by people. Lots of people didn’t believe in Him, and the Pharisees and Sadducees (the religious leaders at the time) did everything in their power to have Jesus killed! And when He died, Jesus was literally pierced by nails and spears while He was on the cross.

The Bible tells us time and time again that Jesus died so that our sins – all those bad things we’ve done – could be wiped away and God wouldn’t punish us anymore (Romans 3:24-25). Why? Because Jesus took the punishment that we deserved for sin – death – when He died on the cross (1 John 2:2, 1 Peter 2:24).

But just like in Isaiah, the story doesn’t end there! Jesus didn’t stay dead. Instead, after three days, He rose again and proved that death had been defeated! This is why we’ll be celebrating Easter in a few days. And this is why we don’t just talk about when Jesus died, but we celebrate that He rose again! Because Jesus died and came back to life, we can trust that all of our sins are forgiven and that we don’t have to worry about dying anymore either. Those broken relationships with God we talked about last week can be fixed because of what Jesus did on the cross! We can have a relationship with God now, one where we love Him and obey Him and can come to Him when we are scared, and we can look forward to going to heaven with God when we die.

But what’s amazing is that Isaiah talked about these things 500 years before they ever happened! And this isn’t the only time that Isaiah talked about Jesus, nor was Isaiah the only prophet to prophecy about Jesus! Prophets from all kinds of places in the Bible were predicting how Jesus would live and how He would deal with sin long before Jesus ever walked on the Earth.

That’s huge guys! The fact that these prophets talked about specific things Jesus would say and do long before He was born helps us to trust that what the Bible says is true. The prophecies about Jesus give us reasons to believe in Jesus. And that last part’s important. Jesus might have died on the cross and rose again to forgive our sins, but each of us still has to decide if we believe that’s true.

If you haven’t done that yet – if you haven’t decided yet to follow Jesus – it’s something really simple to do. All you have to do is pray to God, say that you believe in Jesus, and ask Him to forgive you for your sins. That might be something you want to do with your parents or a pastor at your church though. They can help talk you through more of the Easter story and why it’s so exciting to follow Jesus.

And if you do already believe in Jesus, great! I hope this stuff about Isaiah has encouraged you. But wherever you’re at, I hope you’ll come back next week to hear even more about some of the amazing things our God has done!

~Brentagious

SSS: Set Pieces, or Why Staging Matters

I was in a play back in high school where we didn’t really have a set. Sure, we put out a table and a couple fake bushes when the script called for it, but there was nothing onstage to give the audience an idea of where the play was taking place.

Now there were a couple reasons for this. We were putting on the show in a black box set, meaning that we could easily build and take apart our stage area and take the play around to different places. So part of the lack of stage design was a practicality thing: our set had to be something that we could easily take with us on the go. Instead of building a set, the audience got to use their imagination to fill in the details! Genius, right?

Maybe… But the fact is that we never ended up actually taking the show anywhere. And honestly, our lack of stage design was more because our set guy never designed anything more elaborate. So we were left with a table and a couple fake bushes.

That experience taught me something though. Staging actually matters. Not having a set, I think, hindered our ability to perform the play as effectively as we could have. This play involved a world where nothing was the right colour. I think the grass was supposed to be purple. So not having a way to showcase that lessened the impact the story could have had.

Honestly, I think the same goes for storytelling generally. The more realistic the set in a movie, the more you buy the action taking place. If your Victorian drama looks a little too much like twenty-first century London, people aren’t going to buy your story. In the same way, if all you do when telling a Bible story is stand on an empty stage, you’re missing out on a valuable opportunity to add an extra little pizazz.

Of course, we also have to be realistic. In my experience, church budgets usually have you doing some pretty fancy maneuvering to stay in the black, and neither your Kidmin pastor nor your potential volunteer storyteller usually have the time to paint a mural the size of the stage each week. Plus, your set pieces have to be things that can be easily set up and don’t interfere too much with the jobs anyone else might have to do on stage (like your song and actions people!). What we’re looking for, then, is a cheap but effective way to add some sort of prop or staging element that gives the kids listening something concrete to focus on. 

Let me give you an example. I was asked to tell the story of Abraham sacrificing Isaac a few months back, one of my all-time favourite Bible stories. Now I’ve come up with some interesting ways to tell this one in the past (including a parody of “I Will Survive” that I’m still quite proud of), but I was using a supplied script this time.

So I’m looking at this script and thinking to myself, Is there any object in the story that I can bring in as a prop? Or, if not that exact object, then something similar. I was teaching on the feeding of the 5000 a few weeks back and instead of bringing in 5 loaves and 2 fish, I brought in 5 buns and 2 packages of goldfish. The kids were immediately interested (and begging for goldfish), but the point is that I had given them something to visualize.  

But back to Abraham and Isaac. Most of the props in this story aren’t things that you necessarily want to or can easily bring into a kids’ Bible lesson. Strapping a kid to a table is frowned upon, bringing in a giant knife to show a group of kids tends to get you in trouble, and I don’t know anyone who has a ram they’d be willing to lend me for the story’s climax. So honestly, up until the morning of, I figured I’d just have to be really engaging this time.

Some would say this is when you whip up a PowerPoint using child-friendly images of the story. I’m not against this – I get that it can enhance your story by giving the kids visual representations of what a scene could have looked like. But PowerPoint for kids can quickly become distracting. There’s a danger that they’ll be paying so much attention to the picture that they stop listening to the story. Having a visual on stage with you, however, keeps their attention on both the prop and your story simultaneously.

I didn’t go the PowerPoint route here, but I did start thinking beyond the obvious objects in the story. And I eventually realized that there’s one detail here that’s not immediately obvious but still pretty important and that’s fairly easy to make a copy of… So off to the supply room I went to grab a couple of boxes and blankets. I put a small table on stage, put the boxes on top, somehow made one of the boxes into a point, and then covered the whole thing in brown blankets. And presto, there’s a mountain on stage!

Whenever possible, I try to make my props and staging be something that’s already on stage when the kids come in. That way, they’re already thinking about what the prop could possibly be about. They’ll get distracted with songs and stuff pretty quickly (and rightly so), but before you’ve even started your morning program, you’ve already got them wondering.

I loved watching the kids’ faces when they walked in that Abraham and Isaac morning. Some looked at the stage confused, some looked at me trying to guess what was going on, but most of them just reacted with something like, “WOAH!” or “WHAT’S THAT?” or “THAT’S AWESOME!” Right off the bat, that’s a win for me!

Anyways, song time is over and offering’s been done – now it’s story time. I acknowledge the mountain but don’t make a big deal of it. I wander around the stage a little bit, steering clear of the mountain while I talk about when God told Abraham to sacrifice his son or when Abraham was gathering up the supplies for the offering. 

But then I get to Genesis 22:9, where the Bible says that Abraham and Isaac arrived at the top of the mountain where the sacrifice was to be made. And then I did something so game changing, so revolutionary, so mind blowing that it got gasps from the crowd…

I stepped up on a chair hidden behind this pile of boxes and blankets.

Now this might sound unimpressive. And honestly, I want it to sound that way. But you have to understand something. I might have done nothing more than step up on a chair, but to the kids, I climbed the mountain! It didn’t matter that there was no Isaac with me or that I didn’t have a giant knife or a ram; what mattered was that I had moved with my story. I used my props and my environment to imitate what was going on in the story. In a small way, I made the story come alive.

I didn’t have to spend a cent on these props. They were all things that the church already had. But because I took five minutes to build a fake mountain on stage and find a way to climb it, the kids were suddenly far more interested than if I had just talked at them about what Abraham and Isaac did.

I realize there’s a fine line here. There can be a danger that props or set pieces can end up distracting from the story. But in my experience, that usually happens when you’re going for flashy over functional. When you do something simple but relevant to your story, it actually makes the story more memorable. Why? Because when the kids think back about the prop and the way it was used, then they’ll also remember the story and what they learned about God from it.

That’s why I think staging matters. I’m not talking about set pieces that make your Sunday School stories hyper-realistic; I’m talking about using your stage to enhance the storytelling experience. I’m talking about moving around your stage and using your props in ways that reflect the action in the story. And if you pay attention to these little details, your presentation will actually make the story and its lesson stand out more in your kids’ minds.  

And if you get a couple of “woah’s” in the moment, enjoy them. It means you’ve got their attention. Just make sure you point them back to God once you have it. Glorify God with staging that enhances your storytelling. After all, that’s why we do what we do.

________________________

Just a small aside: I get the irony that this is one of my few blog posts without pictures. But I sadly didn't think to take pictures of the stage set up at the time and didn't want to pass someone else's stage set up as my own. So like in that play I talked about, use your imagination... :P Otherwise, see you again on Thursday when we hear a little more about Easter!

~Brentagious

Genesis 3 - Why We Need Easter

So it’s Easter in just over a week guys. I’ve always liked Easter, and not just because I get to eat a bunch of chocolate. No, Easter’s super important because that’s when we celebrate when Jesus died and rose again. Now that might sound like a weird thing to celebrate, but we celebrate Jesus’ death and resurrection because that’s how Jesus saved us. But some of you might be wondering: “Save us? What do we need to be saved from?”

Well, to answer that, we’re going to have to go way back to the beginning of the Bible. No, not the very beginning – that’ll be a story for another day – but today I want to look at the time when Adam and Eve ate a fruit they weren’t supposed to and why that matters to us.

But I want to make something clear before we start… Today’s story isn’t the happiest story in the Bible. In fact, things feel pretty hopeless when this one ends. But don’t worry, the happy ending is coming next week when we hear a little more about Jesus.

But for now, picture this: God has just finished creating, well, everything! Adam has come up with names for all the animals, God’s given Adam a wife, and everything just seems all around peaceful. Adam and Eve work hard during the day caring for the plants and animals in the Garden of Eden, and they spend their nights talking, relaxing, and probably even playing with God and each other. And whenever they got hungry, they would take fruit from whatever tree was nearest and thank God for how tasty all this fruit was!

Actually, that’s not quite right… They didn’t eat every kind of fruit… See, when Adam and Eve were created, God gave them one command. They could eat fruit from any tree in the garden except for one: the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. All the other fruit was fair game, but not the fruit from that one tree.

That’s it. One rule. Adam and Eve had only one rule they had to follow. You probably have all sorts of rules like, “No cookies before dinner,” or, “Put your toys away after you’re done playing with them,” or, “Don’t hit your brother or sister, no matter how much they’re annoying you!” But God only had this one rule for Adam and Eve.

And this rule is an important one guys. By following this rule, Adam and Eve showed that they loved God! How does that work? By not eating from that one tree like God had asked, Adam and Eve showed that they respected God and His rules. They showed that they were willing to trust God and listen to Him, even though this rule might have seemed random to them. But above all, they showed that they loved God by freely choosing to do what He asked and putting Him first, even though they could have ignored Him.

But then, enter the serpent. The Bible tells us that the serpent “was more clever than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made” (Genesis 3:1, NIrV). I can just picture him slithering up a tree, poking his head through some leaves, giving a sneaky little grin, and then calling out to Eve, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat fruit from any tree in the garden’?” (Genesis 3:2).

Let’s pause right there. That snake just talked. I don’t know about you, but I haven’t met too many talking snakes in my life. Well, Kaa from The Jungle Book, but that’s a movie… That doesn’t count.

Now maybe Eve was surprised that the snake could talk. Maybe she wasn’t. For all we know, Adam and Even still had a lot to learn about God’s amazing creation. But we know something now that Eve didn’t then. We know that the serpent could talk because it wasn’t just any old snake.

See, this snake was Satan, an evil angel who didn’t want to serve God anymore. Satan thought he was better than God and deserved to be worshipped like a god. Satan fought against God and tried to take over heaven. But God knows everything and is all-powerful, so Satan never stood a chance. And because Satan had disobeyed God and fought against Him, the consequence was that Satan was sent away from Heaven forever.  

You can imagine that this would have made Satan pretty angry. And it did. Satan wanted to get revenge on God by ruining the creation God had just made. And what better way to do this than to go after us humans, the thing that God was most pleased with in His creation? So, enter the serpent, were Satan was going to use every trick in the book to get Adam and Eve to disobey God, just like Satan had!

Anyways, like I said before, the serpent asked Eve if they really weren’t allowed to eat from any tree in the Garden, but Eve responded, “No… That’s not right… God said we could eat from any tree except that tree in the middle of the garden. If we eat from or even touch the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, we will die!”

The snake burst out laughing! “Hehehehehahahehahea! You won’t die! God knows that when you eat fruit from that true, you will know things you have never known before. Like God, you will be able to tell the difference between good and evil” (Genesis 3:4-5).

It’s like Satan was saying here, “Don’t you want to be like God? Don’t you want to decide what’s right and wrong? You two look pretty smart… Don’t you think it’s time to take the training wheels off and make your own decision? Why listen to God, what does He know?

Remember, all of these lies and questions were coming from Satan. Satan had been jealous of God, and now he was trying to make Adam and Eve jealous of Him too. Satan had tried to fight against God, but that only ended in him being kicked out of heaven. And now Satan was trying to make Adam and Eve do the same thing – fight against God by disobeying him.

I can only imagine what was going through Eve’s head at that moment. What if the serpent’s right?… Maybe God is hogging all the knowledge for Himself! Why should He be in charge instead of us? Whatever it was she was thinking, none of it was good. They believed Satan’s lies. And before long, both Adam and Eve had eaten the fruit that God had told them not to.

You know how in movies the music always gets super creepy and intense every time the hero does something he or she’s not supposed to. Like when Nemo goes out to touch the boat? Life’s not like that. When Adam and Eve ate the fruit, there was no big, dramatic music. There was no thunder and lightning. They ate the fruit, swallowed, and the serpent smiled, thinking he’d finally gotten the better of God.

But even though there was no dramatic music, there was a change. Adam and Eve looked at each other and gasped. For the first time in their lives, they realized something. They were naked! They weren’t wearing clothes! That hadn’t bothered them before, but now it suddenly did! Something was wrong!

So they tried to fix it. They ran over to a nearby fig tree and started ripping off leaves. Then they sewed these leaves together and made clothes. And the whole time, Adam and Eve were saying to themselves: “What have we done?” and “This whole no clothes thing didn’t bother us before… Why does it now?” and “The snake said we were going to understand good and evil… Is this what he meant?”

That’s when they heard the sound of footsteps coming closer. And with that, all their other questions were immediately replaced with fear. Adam and Eve looked at each other with terror in their eyes. God was coming. Before, Adam and Eve had walked with God, talked with Him, played with Him! But now that they had eaten the fruit they weren’t supposed to, they were terrified! All they could think was, “We’ve disobeyed God, and now he’s going to kill us! What are we going to do?!?!?!”

So they did the only thing they could do… They ran a little further into the Garden and hid behind some trees. And with hearts pounding, doing their best not to breathe too loudly, they heard God call out, “Adam, Eve, where are you?”

Don’t get the wrong idea here. God knows everything. God knew exactly where Adam and Eve were. God already knew what they had done. God knew that Eve was going to blame Adam and that Adam was going to blame the serpent. And actually, God already knew how He was going to fix this (again, the whole Easter thing). In other words, God didn’t ask this question because He didn’t know the answer.

No, God asked Adam where he was and what he and Eve had done because He wanted them to realize something: that their relationship with Him was changed. Broken. Because they had disobeyed Him – because they tried to say that they knew better and didn’t have to listen to God about what was right and wrong – their closeness with Him was destroyed.

Even worse, there was nothing Adam and Eve could do to fix this brokenness. It’s not like they could put the fruit back. Making clothes out of fix leaves wasn’t going to fix the problem. There was no way that they could fix their broken relationships with God on their own. They needed help! 

And sadly guys, this is a problem that all of us have to deal with! All of us have done wrong things in our lives, meaning that all of us have a broken relationship with God too. And like Adam and Eve, this broken relationship with God has huge consequences.

Because Adam and Eve sinned, God sent them away from the Garden of Eden. They had to work harder and experienced more pain because they didn’t listen to God. And even though they didn’t die instantly after eating the fruit, Adam and Eve did eventually die. And none of that would have happened if it hadn’t been for sin.

In the same way, each and every one of us does bad things. We disobey our parents, our teachers, and God Himself. We lie and steal and are mean to our friends. And because we sin, we will have to face consequences too. As long as our relationships with God remain broken, each of us will have to die one day. And unless that broken relationships with God gets fixed, we will be separated from God forever after we die. And just like Adam and Eve, there’s nothing we can do on our own to fix this. No amount of good things we do or “I’m sorry’s” can fix this.

That’s not a happy picture at all, but that’s what this story teaches us. I know that this may all sound scary, but it’s important for us to know this. God tells us the story of Adam and Eve in the Bible so that we’ll learn something super important: that Without God’s help, sin will always keep our relationship with God broken.

But don’t forget, the whole reason I’m telling this story now is because it reminds us of why we need Easter. God loves us so much, and He doesn’t want us to be separated from Him. That’s why He sent Jesus to die and rise again. That is God’s way of helping us! God knows that you and I can’t fix our broken relationships with Him on our own, so He sent Jesus to fix those broken relationships for us! And that’s something we can never say thank you to Him enough for!

We don’t have time to get into the details here, so I hope you’ll come back next week. We’ll be talking more then about Easter, what Jesus did, and why we can trust in Jesus to save us. And believe me guys, you’ll want to come back, because our story next week changes EVERYTHING! 

~Brentagious