a resource by - Clover Sitesstorage.cloversites.com/waipunachapel/documents/Printable Lesson... · And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, ... RED 2: Yup. I love that first stretch

a resource by

table of contents.

how to use it P. 2

lesson summary P. 3

ice breaker P. 3

memory verse P. 3

game P. 4

powerpoint game P. 4

skit P. 5

object lesson P. 8

lesson P. 8

discussion guide P. 10

memory verse P. 12 sheet

TTDDDEDDDDECCOOORRAARAATTTTEEEE YYYYYOOOOOOUOOOOOUUUURRRR RR HHHEEEAARRTTTTTDDDDDD

This is simply one way you can use all of the materials you have received with this curriculum. Our goal is to provide you with more than enough materials for an hour long service so you may not be able to do everything in an hour. The length of time is really determined by how long you choose to spend on each activity. None of these components require any of the others so if you feel the need to cut or rearrange in any-way, go for it!

Here’s one way to use these materials for an hour long service.

Suggested Order:1) Icebreaker - 5 Minutes2) Memory Verse - 5 Minutes3) Skit - 5 Minutes4) Object Lesson - 5 Minutes5) Lesson - 10 Minutes6) Discussion - 15 Minutes7) Game - powerpoint or PDF game - 10 Minutes8) Take Home Activity PDF - 5 Minutes

Also Included:Summary - for teacher Game GraphicMemory Verse Card Sheet x 10Memory Verse CardImage 1Image 2Series Image (can be used for all lessons)Take Home Activity if provided

HOW TO USE IT

p. 2THE LIGHTS

SUMMARY

ICE BREAKER

Bottom line.Jesus came to forgive our sins and give us new life.

Objectives.For students to:-Discover the story of creation and the fall-Identify why God had to send his son-Identify how a bad bulb on a Christmas tree is similar to our story

Memory Verse.-Isaiah 9:6

Key Passages.-Ecclesiastes 7:20-Philippians 2:6-11

Summary.When a string of lights goes bad, it’s easier to throw it out and buy a new one than figure out which bulb has gone bad. Like a broken string of lights, we have all sinned. None of us are righteous. But rather than toss us out, God sent his Son Jesus to re-store us and give us new life.

How many Christmas trees do you have in your house?

MEMORY VERSEIsaiah 9:6

For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoul-ders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

p. 4THE LIGHTS

POWER POINT GAMEChristmas Tree Trivia

1. When a string of lights goes out on your tree, the only thing to do is toss it in thegarbage. FALSE

2. Replacing a dead bulb on a string of lights is usually quick and easy. FALSE

3. There is no one other than Jesus who is without sin. TRUE

4. When Adam and Eve sinned, God decided to start over. FALSE

5. Jesus is the only person who could have died for our sins. TRUE

6. Christmas is the celebration of the birth of Jesus, who died for our sins, and rose again.TRUE

GAMEString the Lights Items needed:Two long, very tangled strings of Christmas lights Choose two teams for this game. Each team will have to untangle a long string of Christmas lights. The first team to successfully detangle their string and stretch it out to its full length wins a prize.

Lights of the SeasonBy John CosperCharacter breakdown: 6 M or FRun time: 5 minutesTheme: Christmas

CHARACTERSRed 1 – A red lightYellow – A yellow lightGreenie – A green lightBlue – A blue lightWhitey – A white lightRed 2 – Another red light

[COSTUME NOTE: All the actors should be wearing matching green pants and long sleeve shirts to simulate a string of Christmas lights. Each one has a tall, colored cap shaped like a light bulb that corresponds to their character’s color.]

Lights are out on stage at the start. The lights come up, and the actors are lined up on stage, holding hands. The main characters are aligned as follows from stage right to left: Red 1, Greenie, Yellow, Blue, Whitey, and Red 2. Other actors dressed similarly may be “attached” to one or both ends leading off stage to create the effect of a longer string of lights. All hang their heads as if asleep. Yellow wakes up first, yawning, then looking down and yelps.

YELLOW: Hey. We’re... we’re on a tree. We’re out of the box. Red! Red, wake up!

Red 1 wakes up.

RED 1: What? What? (looks down) Whoa! Is it Christmas already? YELLOW: Either that, or the family’s having another wacky Christmas in July birthday party. RED 1: Nah, I definitely smell pine. No wait... that’s blue spruce. We’re moving up in the world. YELLOW: Should we wake the others?RED 1: Yeah, might as well. YELLOW: Hey, Greenie!

Greenie wakes up.

GREENIE: I didn’t do it! Oh, hey, Yellow. What’d ya wake me up for?YELLOW: Take a look down!GREENIE: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!!!!

SKIT

Red 2 and Whitey wake up at Greenie’s scream.

WHITEY: Hey, Greenie, what’s the-- WHOA!RED 2: Hey, Whitey, we’re on a tree. It must be Christmas. YELLOW: Hey, guys! Merry Christmas down there!WHITEY: Merry Christmas, Yellow! Boy, it sure feels nice not to be tied up in a box, huh?RED 2: Yup. I love that first stretch of the winter. GREENIE: Tell me when this is over!YELLOW: I can’t believe it. After all these years, you’re still afraid of heights? GREENIE: Uh yeah! Hello! Christmas light here. I can’t exactly go to counseling. RED 2: Look at the bright side. We’re on a low branch this year. It’s not that long of a fall. GREENIE: Oooh, Red, please don’t say things like that!YELLOW: Well, I don’t know about you all, but I am glad to be back on a tree. How about you, Blue? WHITEY: Umm, I think Blue’s still asleep. RED 1: He is?YELLOW: Well wake him up! He loves Christmas as much as the rest of us. GREENIE: Yeah. It’s not like him to sleep through the holidays. Hey, Blue!WHITEY: Blue!RED 2: Wake up, Blue! GREENIE: Hey, Blue, you okay? YELLOW: Maybe we should yell louder. BLUE!!!GREENIE: Come on, Blue. Wake up! Don’t do this, man. RED 1: Do what? What’s Blue doing? WHITEY: Nothing, Red. He’s dead. YELLOW: Dead?? He can’t be dead. Blue, come on, wake up!GREENIE: Stay away from the light, Blue. RED 2: Shouldn’t it be stay away from the dark?GREENIE: Blue? Blue, you’re my boy! Come on, Blue!RED 1: Please tell me he’s lighting up!WHITEY: No chance, Red. He’s gone. YELLOW: Oh no. What are we gonna do?RED 1: I guess we have to go on without him this year. RED 2: I don’t think so. You know well as I do what happens when a bulb goes out. WHITEY: They throw out the whole string. YELLOW: No! They wouldn’t do that to us. After all these Christmases together? WHITEY: Tell that to my White brothers on the White string that got pitched last year. GREENIE: What if we hide the body? Huh? We tuck him back on a branch where he won’t be seen? RED 1: It’s no good. They’ve spotted us. YELLOW: The Dad is coming over!GREENIE: Go back! Stay away from the lights!RED 2: He’s gonna unplug us!YELLOW: I just wanna say before we go, I love you all!

p. 6THE LIGHTS

SKITBlackout. After a 3 second pause. The lights come back up. The bulbs all have their eyes closed, waiting for the end. Blue is awake. Yellow opens an eye.

YELLOW: Hey, we’re still on the tree.

The others, except Greenie, open their eyes.

WHITEY: Hey, yeah! We are. RED 1: He didn’t trash us. YELLOW: Open your eyes, Greenie. We’re still on the tree. GREENIE: Why do you think my eyes are closed? BLUE: Hey, guys. ALL: Blue??BLUE: What’s going on? Is it Christmas?WHITEY: Blue, you’re alive!BLUE: Of course I am. Did we just get hung? RED 2: We’ve been up for a while. But you...RED 1: You were out, Blue. We thought you were dead. BLUE: I was dead! But thankfully, that nice Father man came along and gave me a new light bulb. YELLOW: Wow! I guess you could say he brought you back to light. BLUE: Yeah, I guess so. GREENIE: I’m so glad he did. We thought he would throw us all away and start over. BLUE: Don’t be silly. What kind of a Christmas metaphor would this be if he just threw us all away? GREENIE: Huh. I never thought of it that way. RED 1: It’s a Christmas miracle!BLUE: It sure is, Red.

Christmas music starts playing.

RED 2: Hey, guys, I hear Christmas music. YELLOW: I love this song. I’m so happy it’s Christmas. GREENIE: Yeah, vertigo aside, it’s good to spend another Christmas with my friends and this wonderful family. WHITEY: And their new cat. GREENIE: What?WHITEY: It looks like the family got a cat! And he’s headed right towards us!

The lights all scream. Blackout.

OBJECT LESSONItem needed: An old string of lights (untested)

I hold here in my hands a string of Christmas lights. These are several years old. They’ve been in storage for the last year, and I haven’t plugged them in to test them yet. If this string lights up, I’ll have no trouble putting them up this year. But what if they don’t light up, or what if they’re only half lit? What are my options?

Imagine if you were this string of lights. What would you hope that I choose to do?

We are all like a string of lights that has lost some of its light. We have broken bulbs. We have sin in our hearts. We’re not worthy to stand in the presence of God because we are full of sin. But God loved us so much, he sent Jesus to die or our sins. God chose not to toss us out, but to make us new!

Do you guys want to see if these lights will light up?

Plug in the lights, and let the kids react to what happens.

A string of lights is not a person. It’s just a thing. If you toss one out, it’s no big deal. God did not want anyone to be tossed out. That’s why he sent Jesus. If we believe in Jesus, he will forgive our sins and give us a new life.

p. 8THE LIGHTS

So how many of you already have your Christmas decorations up? How many of you set them up Thanksgiving weekend? Did anyone set them up before Thanksgiving?

It’s crazy to think that some of us completely transform our interior decorating for one month a year, but that’s all part of the fun of Christmas - the lights on the house, the garland on the stairs, the wreath on the door, the Nativity over the fireplace, and of course, the Christmas tree.

You’ll never find two Christmas trees that are exactly alike. Some are elegant and fancy. Some are loaded down with cartoon characters. Some have simple home made deco-rations. And some are just ridiculous. Yet every Christmas tree can be broken down into the same basic components. Every tree has ornaments and a tree topper. Most trees have some sort of tinsel or garland. And almost every tree, indoors and out, is covered in lights!

Christmas lights have transformed in the last few years thanks to changes in lighting technology. LED lights are smaller, brighter, and last so much longer than the old traditional lights. They’re also ridiculously expensive, which is why you still see a lot of trees with the old traditional lights!

LESSON

The funny thing about those old light strings is that it only took one bad bulb to ruin a whole string. If one bulb went out, half the string would go out, rendering the whole string unusable.

A new string of lights only costs $2-5, so most people will simply throw out the old string and buy a new one. But if you saved the spare bulbs when you bought the lights years ago, and if you have the time and patience to go through and swap bulbs one at a time until you find and replace the dead bulb, you can make that string burn bright again.

Believe it or not, that’s what Christmas is all about. Not lights and bulbs, but people who need to be made new - like you and me.

The story of Christmas doesn’t begin with the baby Jesus. It begins in the Garden of Eden. God created a man and a woman, and he lived with them in a garden paradise. They were free to do anything they wished minus one thing - they could not eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge and good and evil. The man and the woman were tricked by a serpent into eating the fruit. The man and the woman now knew right from wrong, and they knew they had disobeyed God.

When God came looking for them, they hid in the garden. They knew they had sinned, and they were afraid of what God would do. Because God is holy and without sin, they were banished from the garden, separated from their Creator by sin and death.

The sin that entered the world through Adam and Eve is in every one of us. As Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes:

Read Ecclesiastes 7:20

We are all like that broken string of lights. We’re useless, and we deserve to be tossed in the trash. But God had a plan to make everything right. He would send a baby, and that baby would change the world.

Read Isaiah 9:6

The child Isaiah spoke of is Jesus, and it is Jesus’ birth that we celebrate at Christmas. Jesus was both God and man. He’s the only man who never sinned in his entire life. Jesus is the only man who did not deserve death, and that’s why Jesus was the only one who could fix our bad bulbs.

God could have tossed us out. He could have replaced us as we would replace a bad string of lights. But God loved us so much, he sent his son to take the punishment for our sins for us. Paul writes about the sacrifice Jesus made for us in Philippians 2.

Read Philippians 2:6-11

I know this doesn’t sound like a typical Christmas message. Christmas is the time when

we remember the birth of Jesus. We remember the baby in the manger in a dirty stable. We remember the shepherds and the angels. We remember the wise men following the star and bearing gifts. But as we start this series on Christmas, it’s important that we begin not with how Jesus came, but why.

God created the world, and he created humans. He gave us the free will to love him, and when we sinned, we were separated from God. We were flawed, like a broken string of lights, and we deserved to be tossed in the trash. But God loved us so much, he sent his Son to die for our sins. Jesus can forgive your sins. He can replace the dead bulbs and give you new life.

As you decorate your homes for the Christmas season, take a moment to reflect on the reason for Christmas. Ask your Mom or Dad to let you help with testing the lights, and when you find a dead string, remember what Jesus did for us. Share it with your family. Share it with your friends. Let the lights of the season remind you that we can all have a new life and new light when we let Jesus transform our lives.

p. 10THE LIGHTS

Break the ice.

1. How many of you have your Christmas decorations up already?

2. Do you help with the decorating? What do you do?

3. What do your parents do with the bad light strings? Do you replace the burned out bulbs, or do you toss them?

SAY: It’s no big deal to most people to toss out a string of lights. Lights are very inex-pensive, and it’s easier than searching for the dead bulb. God didn’t take the easy way out when his favorite creation lost its brightness. God made a way to restore us to him-self and make us bright again!

Study the story.

4. What is sin?

5. Why does sin separate us from God?

Read Ecclesiastes 7:20

6. Is there anyone in this world who is without sin? Why not?

SAY: Paul wrote in Romans that we have all sinned. We all have a burned out bulb, and we all deserve to be tossed out. But rather than tossing us out, God sent his Son to make things right.

Read Philippians 2:6-11

DISCUSSION

7. How did Jesus make himself nothing?

8. What did Jesus do to pay for our sins?

9. Why was Jesus the only person who could die for our sins?

10. Why did Jesus die for our sins?

SAY: John 3:16 tells us that God sent Jesus to die for our sins because he loves us. God couldn’t toss us out because he loved us too much. We have no attachments to our Christmas lights, so it’s no big deal to toss out a dead string. But God loves us, and he would rather die than be without us.

Live it out.

11. If someone were to ask you how Christmas lights are like us, how would you explain it to them?

12. How is changing the light bulbs on a broken light string similar to what Jesus did for us?

SAY: We can use the story of the broken Christmas lights to not only remind us what Christmas is about, but to share it with others. When you spot a burned out light on a tree, remember to thank Jesus for saving us from our sins, and share that message with someone you love.

Dear God,

Thank you for sending Jesus to die for our sins. Thank you for loving us and not tossing us aside. Help us to remember the meaning of Christmas and to share it with others.

In Jesus’ name, Amen

DISCUSSION

CUT ON DASHED LINE

ECECORAORARORARAAATEETEETE YOYOYOYOOUYOUOUOUOUOUURRRR HHHHHEAEAREARTTTTDDDDDEEDDDD

For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. -Isaiah 9:6



















Documents

a resource by - Clover Sitesstorage.cloversites.com/waipunachapel/documents/Printable Lesson... · And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, ... RED 2: Yup. I love that first stretch