Teaching Jeremiah 11 to 15

3-5s

Intro:

Clue – telescope: bring out a telescope and say it is a special telescope for looking into the future. Jeremiah is giving God’s people a glimpse into what will happen in the future.

Use ‘Old Booth’ to make old photos of the children

Read story with pictures:

[Slide 1]This is what the Lord said to me: “Go and buy a linen belt and  put it around your waist. Don’t let the belt get wet.”

[Slide 2] So I bought a linen belt, just as the Lord told me, and put it around my waist. Then the Lord spoke his word to me a second time: “Take the belt you bought and are wearing, and go to Perath. Hide the belt there in a crack in the rocks.” So I went to Perath and hid the belt there, just as the Lord told me.
[Slide 3] Many days later the Lord said to me, “Now go to Perath and get the belt I told you to hide there.” So I went to Perath and dug up the belt and took it from where I had hidden it. But now it was ruined; it was useless.
[Slide 4] Then the Lord said to me: “In the same way I will ruin the people of Judah and Jerusalem. These evil people refuse to listen to my warnings. They stubbornly do only what they want to do, and they follow other gods to serve and worship them. So they will become like this linen belt—useless. As a belt is wrapped tightly around a person’s waist, I wrapped the families of Israel and Judah around me,” says the Lord. “I did that so they would be my people and bring fame, praise, and honour to me. But my people would not listen.

[Slide 5] I will cry painfully,
    and my eyes will overflow with tears,
    because the Lord’s people will be captured.

All Judah will be taken as prisoners to a foreign land;
    they will be carried away completely.

[Slide 6] You might ask yourself,
    “Why has this happened to me?”
It happened because of your many sins.
Can anyone change the colour of his skin?
    Can a leopard change his spots?
In the same way, Jerusalem, you cannot change and do good,
    because you are always doing evil.

[Slide 7] “I will scatter you like rubbish that is blown away by the desert wind.
This is what will happen to you;
    this is your part in my plans,” says the Lord.
“Because you forgot me
    and trusted in false gods,
[Slide 8] I have seen the terrible things you have done:
your hateful acts
    on the hills and in the fields.
How terrible it will be for you, Jerusalem.
    How long will you continue being unclean?”

Teaching:

Talk:

Have you ever broken one of your favourite toys accidentally? How did it make you feel? Upset?

Have you ever broken a toy when you’re angry, maybe because you’ve thrown it, or dropped it off a sofa?

It can be sad when our favourites things break. Well in our story today we saw that something that God cared for was broken. It’s actually quite a sad story, and quite a hard one for us to listen to, so lets pray that God would help us to understand it.

It was a bit odd, Jeremiah was talking about a belt. It might have been a bit like this… It was a new belt, one that Jeremiah wore. Then God told him to go hide it. So Jeremiah did. Then a few days later God told Jeremiah to go and get it back. When Jeremiah found it, it was ruined. It was all dirty, it couldn’t be used as a belt anymore.

And God said. That is what is going to happen to my special people. They are going to be ruined, they are going to be broken and useless, like those toys we talked about earlier.

But what god says about his special people and how they get ruined is quite odd. He says it doesn’t happen accidentally, like our toys we may have broken. God’s people don’t get broken and God just says “Ooops” because God never says oops. He says that he is going to ruin his special people. God is going to be the one who breaks his most favourite thing. He is going to do it because his special people do not listen to him. They don’t worship him, but they worship silly statues. As we looked at last week, they turn their backs on God and think that other things are more important, or better than him.

And that makes God sad and angry, because they’re just silly statues, they can’t do anything to save them. They’re just made of wood or stone, they’re not real. God says, like the belt was around Jeremiah, well my special people were around me, they knew me, they knew all the fantastic things that I had done for them, but they didn’t listen to me, they ignored God.

So God’s special people would get invaded, they would get beaten by another country and carried away. Because sin makes God angry. And they hadn’t looked back, they hadn’t learnt from what Israel had done.

And our sin makes God angry too. Whenever we turn our back on God, whenever we tell him to Stuff off, and say that I’m in charge, and so No to Jesus, that makes God angry.

There isn’t really any good news in our Bible story today. It’s not good that our sin makes God angry, but it is true. God is (big word alert) holy. That means that he is super perfect and can’t have anything to do with sin.

But this story reminds me of another story in the Bible where we see God being angry about sin. You may have heard it before, but it happened quite a few years after Jeremiah. But instead of God being angry at lots of people, he was angry at one person.

Listen to this little bit from the book of Mark 15:33-37.

When Jesus died on the cross God was pouring out His anger on Him instead of us.

That is how we know that God will forgive us. Yesterday we saw that God invites us back – this is how he invites us back, with Jesus, because Jesus gets ruined instead of us.

So when we sin, when we turn our back on God and do what we want to do not what he wants us to do we still make God sad and angry, so we still need to say sorry. But we know that God will forgive us, because Jesus has died on the cross, and God was angry with all our sin on Jesus, so after we have said sorry, we also need to say thank you, because Jesus took our place.

Craft:

Make a telescope with the Bible verse on

Leopard mask and stick on spots

Make a linen belt

Songs:

God sits in the Highest Place (from Colin Buchanan’s God Rock)

10,9,8 God is great (from Colin Buchanan’s 10,9,8)

 
5-11s

Intro:

Clue – telescope: bring out a telescope and say it is a special telescope for looking into the future. Jeremiah is giving God’s people a glimpse into what will happen in the future.

Use ‘Old Booth’ to make old photos of the children

  
Use same story as above

Talk:

Have you ever broken one of your favourite toys accidentally? How did it make you feel? Upset?

Have you ever broken a toy when you’re angry, maybe because you’ve thrown it, or dropped it off a sofa?

It can be sad when our favourites things break. Well in our story today we saw that something that God cared for was broken. It’s actually quite a sad story, and quite a hard one for us to listen to, so lets pray that God would help us to understand it.

It was a bit odd, Jeremiah was talking about a belt. It might have been a bit like this… It was a new belt, one that Jeremiah wore. Then God told him to go hide it. So Jeremiah did. Then a few days later God told Jeremiah to go and get it back. When Jeremiah found it, it was ruined. It was all dirty, it couldn’t be used as a belt anymore.

And God said. That is what is going to happen to my special people. They are going to be ruined, they are going to be broken and useless, like those toys we talked about earlier.

But what god says about his special people and how they get ruined is quite odd. He says it doesn’t happen accidentally, like our toys we may have broken. God’s people don’t get broken and God just says “Ooops” because God never says oops. He says that he is going to ruin his special people. God is going to be the one who breaks his most favourite thing. He is going to do it because his special people do not listen to him. They don’t worship him, but they worship silly statues. As we looked at last week, they turn their backs on God and think that other things are more important, or better than him.

And that makes God sad and angry, because they’re just silly statues, they can’t do anything to save them. They’re just made of wood or stone, they’re not real. God says, like the belt was around Jeremiah, well my special people were around me, they knew me, they knew all the fantastic things that I had done for them, but they didn’t listen to me, they ignored God.

So God’s special people would get invaded, they would get beaten by another country and carried away. Because sin makes God angry. And they hadn’t looked back, they hadn’t learnt from what Israel had done.

And our sin makes God angry too. Whenever we turn our back on God, whenever we tell him to Stuff off, and say that I’m in charge, and so No to Jesus, that makes God angry.

There isn’t really any good news in our Bible story today. It’s not good that our sin makes God angry, but it is true. God is (big word alert) holy. That means that he is super perfect and can’t have anything to do with sin.

But this story reminds me of another story in the Bible where we see God being angry about sin. You may have heard it before, but it happened quite a few years after Jeremiah. But instead of God being angry at lots of people, he was angry at one person.

Listen to this little bit from the book of Mark 15:33-37.

Mark is talking about Jesus dying on the cross. There’s 2 things that helps me see that God was angry here. 1) it went dark for 3 hours and 2) Jesus says that God has left him alone. When Jesus dies on the cross, God was angry. But Jesus hadn’t done anything wrong, he was perfect, he had never sinned. But here we see that God is angry. Why is God angry? Well because on the cross, Jesus had all our sin on him. Everything that we do which makes God angry, is on Jesus. So God gets angry with our sin, but Jesus is the one who takes our place. Just like the belt that got ruined, Jesus gets ruined instead of us. That is how much God loves us. That is how special we are to him.

That is how we know that God will forgive us. Yesterday we saw that God invites us back – this is how he invites us back, with Jesus, because Jesus gets ruined instead of us.

So when we sin, when we turn our back on God and do what we want to do not what he wants us to do we still make God sad and angry, so we still need to say sorry. But we know that God will forgive us, because Jesus has died on the cross, and God was angry with all our sin on Jesus, so after we have said sorry, we also need to say thank you, because Jesus took our place.

Table time:

Funsheets

Leopard mask and stick on spots

Questions:

Put pictures of story in order in the group.

Knowledge

• God had ‘tied’ Himself to caring for His people, Judah, but what had they done? How did God show this?
• Can a leopard change its spots? Could Judah change and obey God?
• What’s going to happen to Judah? Will it be nice?

Understanding

• Why did God need to change their hearts?
• How did Jeremiah feel about what God was going to do to Judah?
• What is going to happen to people who say ‘no’ to God today?

Application

• Do you think it will be wonderful to be with Jesus forever?
• What are you looking forward to most about it?
• What should we do for our friends who say ‘no’ to God?