Sin Can Knock Your Lights Out!
Angle 1:
Angle 2:
Needed:
- Empty pitcher
- Empty clear glass
- Baking soda
- Vinegar
- Several candles
Lesson:
We are the light of the world!
Light the various candles explaining how you become a light (plan of Salvation, repentance, baptism in Jesus name and receiving the Holy Ghost)
Unfortunately, there is a devil out there that would like to put out your light and one of the easiest ways he can do this, is to put sin in your life.
Pull out the big pitcher and pour baking soda into it while saying the following:
We are tempted all the time to do things that aren’t right and each time we give in, something is put into us.
All we have to do is repent and tell God we are sorry for the wrong things we have done and He WILL forgive us, but if we don’t take care of sin, it can settle into our hearts.
Pull out the vinegar and start to pour it into the baking soda (this will cause bubbling and will be creating the carbon dioxide gas) while saying the following:
If we tell a lie or get in a fight with our brother, sister or friend… or maybe we don’t obey our parents or we cheat at school, we start to have a cloud of sin fill our lives. Sin is invisible… you can’t see, but it is real anyway.
Show that the glass is empty by turning it upside down over the candles and show that it doesn’t have any effect on them.
Pour the carbon dioxide (sin) into the empty glass being very careful to make sure that NO LIQUID goes in the glass at all!
Hold up the glass and say:
This glass is now completely full of sin. Can you see it? No, but it can still put out your light!
Slowly pour the “sin” on the candles one by one and watch them go out.
You may need to make more “sin” if you have several candles.
Used this object lesson during a Kids’ Church lesson on “The Sin of Achan and Defeat at Ai.”
I used food coloring to make the vinegar appear almost black, illustrating that often we think of sin as those dark, black, things that we can see in people’s lives (obvious and visible sins) but often we have hidden sin that is invisible, but it fills our hearts (the carbon dioxide). This hidden sin – like the accursed things hidden in Achan’s tent – can put our spiritual “light” out just as quickly and as easily as those dark, ugly, and obvious sins.
Using two candles, we also taught that one candle represented Israel, as God’s light to the nations in the Old Testament. The other candle represented us – the Church – who are called to be the light of God to a very dark world today. Just as sin put out Israel’s light and caused defeat before the world at the battle of Ai, even so today unrepentant sin will put out our light and destroy our Christian witness and our walk with God. In this way we used the Old Testament “shadow” to point the children toward a New Testament truth.
Wow, that is really creative. I love it!