Scripture: for teacher background: Deut 6:4; 2 Cor 13:13; 2 Cor 1:21-22; John
14:16-31
Matt
3:13-17; Luke 3:21,22
Making contact:
Talk about eggs and maybe have a hard
boiled egg there, which you can cut in half as you talk.
Ask how many eggs do they see – one. Are
they sure it is one egg? Let’s cut it open and see how many part it has –
3 -the shell, the yolk and the white.
Each part of the egg has a job to do. The shell protects the egg. The white
protects the yolk and the yolk becomes a chicken if it is fertilized. It is 1
egg with 3 parts.
You can also talk about a candle. It is one
candle. When it is dark you can’t actually see the candle but if you light it
there are 2 things that happen – you can see the light and you can feel the
warmth around the candle.
Exploration:
It is very difficult for our little brains
– show a little head sized circle) to understand God, a God who made the whole
universe that we can’t even measure. (If we could travel to the sun by express
train it would take 300 years to get there and to get to Neptune it would take
8, 300 years and 75 000 000 years to reach the nearest star. How does a human understand God who made all
this?
But God has used every possible way to show
us what He is like.
The first thing we learn is that He is the One and true
living God. The 2nd thing we learn is that He came to visit earth in
the form of a human man called Jesus, and the 3rd thing we learn is
that He is here today in Spirit.
Now let’s think about the egg again – One
egg, but 3 parts. Having 3 jobs. God is One but has 3 jobs. One in Three and
Three in One.
The
candle too – you can’t see the candle in the dark.
We can’t see God, but when
Jesus came it was like lighting the candle. We could see what God is like. Then
the Spirit came and we can feel the warmth of God’s Presence. One in Three and
Three in One.
Another way of explaining God is to draw a
triangle. How many shapes can you see? One. How many sides to a triangle? 3.
But how many shapes? ONE!
One in Three and Three in One. We can say
we see different sides of God. If we could go to Heaven now we would see God
the Father.
People saw Jesus the Son on earth who died and rose again and now
we have the Holy Spirit here around us and if we believe in Jesus, He lives
inside us.
So we can’t really SEE all the sides of the triangle now. One in
Three and Three in One.
When Jesus was baptised, the people there
could see or hear all three sides of the triangle, or the candle or the egg.
(You could get a child to do the reading – from Luke 3:21,22)
You could then
ask who was being baptized? Jesus.
What did they hear? God the Father’s voice,
saying He was well pleased.
What did they see? They actually saw the Holy
Spirit come down on Jesus like a dove.
When else did people see the Holy Spirit?
At Pentecost – they saw flames on each person’s head and they heard a powerful
wind.
Application
It might be difficult to understand, and
you might need to accept in faith that you believe in God the Father, God the
Son and God the Holy Spirit even if you don’t fully understand.
That is what
faith means. I have faith in electricity. I use it all the time, but I
certainly don’t understand it. I use a cell phone all the time and I don’t
understand how it works.
Challenge to Mission
Try and talk to people about Jesus and the Holy Spirit.
They are like people who have an egg but never taste it or have a candle but
never light it.
Maybe you can help them understand how amazing our God is to be
Three in One and One in Three. Make sure you explain that God is One God.
Consolidation
There is a worksheet
with a memory verse and extra verses to read. At the bottom of the sheet there
are 3 shapes to cut out. They need to then be put together like a puzzle to
make a triangle shape.
Memory Verse
“The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the
love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” 2 Cor
13:13
Belief Statement
We believe there is
one true and living God – One in Three and Three in One.
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