In the Verse Kit Box:
Robot Toy:
Review:
(I was able to do extra review cards tonight as the children seemed to get the lesson easily and the verse made sense.)
Lesson:
Introduce the verse by reading through it, including the reference. Have the student read through it.
Younger students: point out the photo on the card. (I stole it from Amazon!) It’s a robot toy, but thank God, we are NOT robots! We get to choose how we live our lives. And this verse says that “whatever we do,” to make God happy. So whether we are brushing our teeth, helping carry in groceries, doing the chore we hate the most (ask what this is. I heard empty the cat litter box, doing dishes, etc), we get to choose our attitude. We can decide to glorify God even in cleaning the litter box!
Older students: Take a look at 1 Corinthians chapter 10. The early church (make sure they know you’re not talking about the 8am service versus the 10am service! We’re talking about the first Jesus followers, something that had never existed before!) in Corinth was having an argument. Unsaved people were offering meat sacrifices and wine offerings to their idols, but did the idols eat/drink them? (no!) So then, basically the meat and wine were taken back to the market and put on the clearance shelf because they were kind of “used.”
Some Christians thought that God wants us to be good stewards of our money, so they bought it without hesitation and ate right up.
Other Christians thought, No! We can’t have ANYTHING to do with idols, including this food and wine.
So there was this big argument and the church leaders didn’t know what to do, so they asked Paul for his advice. And Paul wrote them a letter (called 1st Corinthians) to tell them what to do. He said BOTH SIDES ARE RIGHT!
He said that as long as your conscience is clear before God, then eat the meat. And if your heart is telling you NOT to eat it, then don’t. It’s ok to have different opinions. The one thing to keep in mind is not to offend the people thinking the other way about this. More or less, the old adage rings true: respect others.
Which brings us to our verse, concluding Paul’s discussion:
“So whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.”
(As a teacher–and I said this to the kids–I find this verse funny because Paul could have just said “whether you eat or drink, do it all for the glory of God.” But instead he added that little phrase “whatever you do” to make it applicable to SO MANY other areas of our lives: politics, with the elections coming up; Halloween next week, etc.)
By now, you have referenced/read the verse another 2-3 times. Have the students read the verse twice and see if they can say it without looking. If not, break it down into phrases until they can.
Kit:
Robot Toy. The hands and feet are suction cups and will stick to a flat surface!
Bible Literacy:
Help your student find and highlight/underline 1 Corinthians 10:31. Have older students read through the chapter to see if the above information is correct. Discuss how this can apply to our modern life today. (Is it ok to stand up for what you believe if you are offending someone? What about the things in Scripture that God makes very clear are wrong?)
