Two presenters teach kids Jesus' parable of the wise and foolish builders, using a song about houses built on rock versus sand. They explain that building your life on Jesus means stability, and use a mirror to show how believers reflect God's love by helping others and praying for their needs.
Chapters
Okay kids, join with me. You ready?
The wise man built his house upon the rock.
Do you know the song?
Wise man built his house upon the rock. The wise man built his house upon the rock. And the house— oh, the rains came tumbling down. The rains came down and the floods came up.
You know, in the Bible says the rivers came up.
Anyway, and the floods came up. The rains came down and the floods came up, and the house on the rock—
stood firm. It did, it stood firm. What about the other guy, the foolish guy?
The foolish man built his house upon the sand. The foolish man built his house upon the sand. The foolish man built his house upon the sand, and the house—
oh no, wait, we have to sing the chorus, don't we?
And the rains came tumbling down. The rains came down and the floods came up. The rains came down and the floods came up. The rains came down and the floods came up. And the house on the sand went splat.
It did, didn't it? So where should we build our house— houses?
So, yeah, so build your house on the Lord Jesus.
No, build your life. Our houses are on rock.
Yeah, build your lives on the Lord Jesus Christ. Build your lives on the Lord Jesus Christ and the blessings come tumbling down. The blessings come down as the prayers go up. The blessings come down as the prayers go up. The blessings come down and the prayers go up. So build your life on Jesus, on the Lord.
I'm glad I have a teacher in the front row. Jenny was trying to teach it to me this morning.
I'm like, I'll try to remember.
So that story is where we're going to start our children's story today, because we're talking about wisdom. And that story is— you know what the punchline is? The punchline of a joke is the funny bit at the end. The punchline of a sermon is the bit that the preacher saves to the end because it's the most powerful. It's the one that makes you think about everything they've said and hold it in your head and think about it again later. That story is in the Bible, and it's the punchline of Jesus's— what we call the Sermon on the Mount. So he went up and he shared all this wisdom, and two chapters, Matthew chapters 5, 6, and 7— 7, 3 chapters. And at the end, the very last story, he tells 3 separate stories. He tells one about a door, one about a gate, and then he talks about these foundations that are built on stone or built on sand. And I have something in here that I want to share with you guys. What do you think's in my bag? Bible? Yep, there's a Bible in that one. I don't think you'd ever guess, so I'm just going to pull it out.
A mirror!
A mirror. Who wants to be my mirror person and help me out? You want to come forward? Come up and stand in front of me facing out towards the audience. Oh, maybe sit down so you're a little bit shorter. You're just too tall. Okay, who do you see in the mirror? Is— wait, is that the close one? That's too close. Who do you see in that mirror? You. Now, who do you see in that mirror? Who's in the mirror? Who's in the mirror? How come it's changing? Because I'm turning the mirror. Okay, thank you for your help. Did you know my favorite Christian thinker, his name is Tom, Tom Wright, and he says that all of us are like mirrors if we know Jesus. And what we do is if we take the— and we just hold Jesus, I hold our spiritual life, the Bible, Jesus, our relationship with God like this and we just say, I'm working on myself, I'm working on myself, I'm working on myself. Who am I going to see? I'm going to see myself. Am I going to get happy after a while? No, I'm going to get sad. And but if I tilt it up like this, then I will see who? God. If I tilt it like the way he says it is, we are the mirror. So if I'm facing up to God and he's looking at me and he looks out through me and he sees the people. And what Tom says, he is— he says, when we look out and we— when we are an angled mirror so that when God looks at us, he sees— well, we'll start the other way. When we look around at the people, we see the needs around us, so we pray for them and we take those prayers up to the Lord Jesus Christ, and then the blessings come down. But do we just catch them all and keep all the blessings for ourselves? No, we share the blessings out like that. And so we, being an angled mirror, we're praying for the world and the needs of the world, and God hears our prayer, and then he gives us the giftedness, the, the skills, the resources that we need to go and help the world around us. So I really like that, and we could stop it right there, but I just wanted to read the rest of— I want to read the story in the Bible because there's a tidbit in the story that's not in the song, and it talks about those blessings. Let's go to Matthew chapter—
what did I say? Matthew chapter 5, 6, and 7.
And if it's at the end, what book's it going to be in? Matthew chapter 7. It's at the end of the sermon, and at the end of chapter 7 is verse 24. Okay, I'm just going to read the story of the wise man and the foolish man that Jesus talked about, and you listen to— doesn't use the word blessings, but but it talks about the blessings. Listen carefully. Therefore, everyone who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain fell, the rivers rose, and the wind blew and pounded that house, yet it didn't collapse because its foundation was on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and doesn't act on them will be like a foolish man who builds his house on the sand. The rain fell, the rivers rose, the winds blew and pounded that house, and it collapsed. It collapsed with a great crash. When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowd were astonished at his teachings, because he was teaching them like one who had great authority. So Jesus had it in there twice. Did you hear it? If you do these things that I have said The blessings are us doing things. Sometimes, um, we get confused about thinking that doing things are what we do to be saved. That's not at all what the Bible teaches. It teaches that if we're looking at God, that he's going to see the needs of the world, he's going to see the needs around us, and he's going to say, if you've heard my words, you'll do them. You'll go out and you'll help the poor, and you'll help the, the needy, and you'll— all the things. If you want to go and read Matthew 5, 6, and 7 this afternoon, you'll say, oh, those are the things Jesus wants me to do. Because I'm looking at him every morning and he can see the needs of the world through me and I'm praying for them. So it's pretty cool to be God's— to be a mirror for God on earth, isn't it? That we can show him what we see and he can show us the needs of those around us through our prayer time. Thank you for listening so much and may you be wise.
