VBS Week 4 -- The Death and Resurrection

It's the last day of VBS!  This is the first and last year that we have VBS during church on Sundays.  And I felt like this was a good one.  Here is my morning talk:

Everyone, let’s round up and come sit for a spell.  During craft time today, you’re making a miner’s journal.  The miners in the Old West liked to record their thoughts in journals.  A lot of those journals held sad, sad news.  The long trip on the Santa Fe Trail was tough.  Many sad journal entries were written describing terrible hunger, choking dust, wagons swept downstream, loss of supplies, lost children, and sickness and death along the way.  In fact, so many people died on the trail (about one in twenty), the travelers would sometimes dig a grave in the path of the covered wagons, so the wagons could roll right over the grave to flatten it. 

But if they made it to gold country and found gold, you better believe their sad news changed to glad news.  The good news of striking it rich often made up for all the sad news.

Their sad-news-to-glad-news accounts are nothin’ though, compared to the one about the end of Jesus’s life.  We’ve talked aobut his unique birth and life.  Today we’re going to talk about his unique death and resurrection.  It’s the most amazing sad-news-to-glad-news story ever.  Here we go, y’all!

For VBS, I had two girls for the pre-teen class!  We each took turns read passages of Jesus's passion from the book of Matthew, and after each reading, we did hand signs to go with each passage.  I hope they can remember them and show them to their family when they are in their respective homes this week.  Another cool thing was an A to Z Scripture look-up with Jesus's names in both Testaments. 

For the skit today, we caught Ragin' Ronny.  How did we do it?  The sheriff laid out some M&Ms along with a tract and a Bible.  Now Ragin' Ronny is saved and everyone can have candy!  Yay!

Here is my 11:00 talk:

            What a wonderful testimony of God’s power to change lives.  He created the world with the words of his mouth and it’s his words in the Bible that can awaken people to accept Jesus Christ as their Lord.

            What would happen if Ragin’ Ronnie had not been saved?  What would happen if you never got saved?  That would be some terrible news.  God would still be justified if he never saved us.  But he was not satisfied with that.  God always knew that he would send Jesus to die for us on the cross because Jesus is the only one who would be able to experience hell and live to tell about it.  And if nobody had ever sinned, then Jesus would not have come to save us and nobody would know God has the loving, forgiving Father that he is.  And because Jesus is God, we can know that God is our only Savior and the only reason that we are alive.  Amen!

I hope that isn't too mystical.  The part about Jesus needing to come die so that we could know God as a loving, forgiving Father.   I did derive it from John MacArthur's sermon about God ordaining sin, so it should be accurate. 

In the next three weeks, the lady who normally teaches the kids' Sunday School will be out of town so I'm teaching.  I had already thought of catching up the students on Genesis 1-11 before I start talking about Abraham.  I had started planning out lessons, but then got to October 30, the day before Reformation Day!  I was like, man, I gotta do a better job teaching about Martin Luther's reformation this year.  I might need to get a head-start and start teaching about the Solas.  I might mix both ideas.  But you'll hear from my lessons, I'm sure.  I also need to find better ways to teach the order of the Bible books so the kids can know them.  I think I'll just have to teach them some songs that I know.  I'm always open for suggestions.