Locations & Times

There is only one person who is great, mighty, and powerful - that's Jesus! In this three-week series, kids will enter on the game-show site of Spin That Wheel Xs and Os to play giant games of tic-tac-toe, hear incredible stories of Jesus' life, and help the goofy professionals remember the stories. Kids will learn there really is no one like Jesus!

WORSHiP

BIBLE VERSE

"LORD, no one is like you. You are great. You are mighty and powerful," Jeremiah 10:6.

GROUP Q&A

1. What did the Pharisees always try to do to Jesus? (trap him with their rules)
2. Why did God create the Sabbath? (to rest and focus on him)
3. Do you think Jesus cares more about people or the rules people make up? (Discuss. Jesus cares more about people.)
4. How did Jesus show the Pharisees that doing good on the Sabbath is a good thing? (He shared the story of the sheep falling down into a pit, and healed the man with a paralyzed hand.)
5. If you were the man with a paralyzed hand, what would you say to Jesus when he walked into the Synagogue? What would you say after he healed you? (Discuss as you decorate your galaxies.)

PARENT BIBLE STUDY

Read: Matthew 12:1-14

It’s easy to hate the Pharisees. The way they constantly try to trap and trick Jesus is infuriating.

The way they follow rules to the letter of the law, while excluding the spirit of the law is annoying. They’re like elementary school tattle tales. But we’re all Pharisees. We all make up our minds about something and then gather evidence to support our idea. We don’t rationally evaluate what’s going on around us and then make a conclusion. We don’t look at someone and assess who they are based on what they say to us or how they treat us. We make up our minds first, and we treat people with our impressions of them already in place. That’s a Pharisee.

They weren’t trying to figure out who Jesus was based on what he said and did. They had made up their minds in advance that he was blasphemous, and they were trying to figure out how to discredit him. Jesus knew what the Pharisees were thinking. He also knew that the truth was most important. So he kept trying to show them the truth. He knew there were rules on the Sabbath for a reason, but that reason was for rest and worship, not an excuse to stop caring for people. Loving people has always been more important to God than any religious rule. That’s why he sent Jesus. Love is how people should be able to assess whether or not we are Christians. Jesus gave his followers a new command in John 13:34: Love one another.

“Just as I have loved you, you must also love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another,” John 13:34-35.

When we start seeing others as a pain, an interruption of our me time, annoyances, or worse, we are disobeying Jesus’ command to love. He even loved the Pharisees, explaining God to them over and over when he knew they weren’t listening. He loved his followers, showing them that patient response to his enemies and teaching them that people were more important. He loved the hurting, healing the man with the disabled hand no matter what day it was and pointing out that doing good is always good.

How are you loving others as Jesus loved us? Is there anyone you need to start over with, erasing your pre-conceived ideas of who they are, erasing your hate with the love of Christ?

Where are you following rules to the exclusion of loving people?