VBS Wrap up 2024

This past week, we have had such an awesome time with the kids here. By the end of the week, they were able to teach me a lot of the things that we had covered. That is what it is about. Instilling the truth of God’s word into kids at a young age.

I can remember having such a hard time growing up with friends that weren’t Christians. But at least when many of us were growing up, there was this air of moralism that we had. That is gone. Now, the world that our children is growing up in is so much harder. They are being taught at such a young age that truth is not real and we can make our own realities.

So I want to thank you all for taking this week to bring your children to our church and entrust us with them. Maybe you didn’t bring them with the intention of implanting truth in them to be able to protect them as they grow up in this world. Maybe you brought them because you just needed some alone time. I get it. But what you did by bringing them this week could be what sets the stage for them to be able to stand up for Jesus in this world that we live in.

This week, we opened up our assembly with prayer, so I am going to do that now.

Prayer

After prayer, we took up our offering. We won’t do that again right now. But I want to you to know that our offering went to a family who has a baby who is 6 months old and has never been able to come home from the hospital. They have been traveling to the hospital, eating up there, and spending all of their time there that they can. So we collected our offering to go to that family to help with gas and food. And our total for the offering this week was…

Offering Total: $202.28

After that, we did our Jungle Jam song that you heard earlier. Then we watched a skit on the screens. This skit set the tone for the evening and introduced some of the themes for the week. We have two families that we follow in the skit. It follows Cael and his grandson Zane who go to take a jungle river boat expedition. They are joined with another family, Harper and Cassie. The owner of the boat is named Jungle Jim and the guide on the boat is CJ. Kids, what happened right where we left off on Thursday night with the skit?

We really want you as parents to see all of what your kids experienced this week. We saved our very last skit for this morning. We left it with a cliffhanger so I know the kids are ready to see what happened.

Video

So that is what your kids have seen in our drama skits this week. But I think what is more important is what they have been learning. So I want to give everyone a quick overview of what we have learned this week.

First C: Creation

On the first day, we talked about creation. We talked about the two different teaching of creation, the big bang theory and the biblical truth. I used an illustration with them to think through. I said if we had a pile of bricks right here and I put a stack of dynamite in it and it exploded, would it create a house? No. We would need someone to pick it up brick by brick and put it together. So the creation of the universe was not an accident, but it was purposefully put together by a builder. And we know who that builder is from the very first verse of the bible.

Genesis 1:1 “1 In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”

Transition to Adam and Eve. Created by God. Had perfect fellowship with God. Things were going good. Until…

Second C: Corruption

So we get to a place in the bible a short time later when something went wrong. See, everything was perfect in the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve had personal fellowship with God. But they had one rule. What was that rule kids?

Satan used the serpent to convince Eve that they should eat from the tree. He told her that God was afraid that if they did eat from it, then they would become like him. So her and Adam took from the tree and ate from it. This was when corruption came into the world.

Kids, what is it called when we break God’s rules? Sin

But see, it didn’t just stop with Adam and Eve. This corruption effected everyone. He didn’t just kick them out and punish them. Because of the sin of Adam and Eve, we all have sin. And because of that, we must be punished.

Psalm 14:3 ESV

3 They have all turned aside; together they have become corrupt; there is none who does good, not even one.

The bible teaches us that none of us do good. You may not think that to be true. Maybe you think that surely, there are people who do good. Let’s put this into God terms. To do good, you must keep the law of God. Law of God equals good. Well, we are all born sinners. When we sin, we break God’s law. So if everyone breaks God’s law, and they do, then that means that there is no one who does good. And that led us into our 3rd C which is…

Third C: Catastrophe

Now we fast forwarded a little bit. Some time has passed since Adam and Eve got their eviction notice from the garden of Eden. They had kids, their kids had kids, and so on.

Kids: With the more and more people who were on the earth, do we think that they got better at keeping God’s rules or got worse?

That’s right, they got worse. And we come to a man in the bible named Noah. When we get to Noah in the bible, so many things were going bad.

Genesis 6:5–8 ESV

5 The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. 6 And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. 7 So the Lord said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them.” 8 But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.

In all that was going wrong, God found one person that was favorable. God decided that he wanted to wipe the slate as clean as he could. So Noah followed what God told him to do and started building a really, really big boat. So Noah got his family together, his sons and their wives, and then God sent 2 of every animal to get on the boat. And then what happened kids?

This big catastrophic event happened called a flood. This flood covered the entire earth. You might be thinking, was the flood really necessary? Well the people on earth had gotten so bad and had become so sinful that God had to punish them. And this time, he punished them with a flood that killed everyone but Noah’s family. But that wasn’t all. Because after the flood, God gave us a promise. He gave us a rainbow to remind us of this promise.

Kid’s: What was the promise that God gave us? (not flood the earth again)

So after the flood, did things get better or did they get bad again?

They got bad again and then there comes our fourth C for the week which is…

Fourth C: Confusion

We fast forward again. We are now around 100 years or so after the flood. Noah and his family had kids, and their kids had kids, and so on. Now, there were a lot of people again. These people thought that they were smart. They thought they had a great idea.

Genesis 11:4 (ESV)

4 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves

These people wanted to make a name for themselves by building a tower that reached up to the heavens. The only problem with that was that God did not want the same thing that they wanted. Now, this should not come to a shock to us, whether we are children or adults. We often times think that we know better than God does and that our plan is better than God’s.

So what did God do? He punished them. He confused them by making them all speak different languages. But he didn’t stop there. Remember that after the flood, Noah’s family was all that was left. God used this event to disperse people and sent them throughout all of the Earth.

-Making our way to Jesus-

The first 3 nights, this is what we covered. They all learned what sin was, they learned that we are all sinners, and they learned that when we sin, there will be punishment. And this brings us to our next C word…

Fifth C: Christ

We spent all that time talking about how sinful people are and we finally get to the one person who ever lived who never sinned, Jesus Christ. I would say that most of your kids were familiar with Jesus and that we get to celebrate his birth at Christmas. But we got the opportunity to go a little further with who Jesus was. See, Jesus was not only man, but he was God. And because he was God, he was there when all of these other C’s happened.

Jesus was able to live a perfect life, which means that he never broke God’s law. He was sinless. We learned that we were born sinful because of the sin of Adam and Eve. But this did not apply to Jesus because he was God who came down in the form of a real life person. And by talking about Jesus, that leads us to our sixth C word…

Sixth C: Cross

When we were talking about the cross, we learned that the bible teaches that the punishment for sin is death. With some of the kids, I used this story of our mom baking some fresh cookies. But they weren’t for us, they were for someone else. And mom put them away and told us that we better not touch them. But as soon as mom left, we found the cookies and started chowing down. But then mom came back, and we got caught. Now, all of the kids agreed that if they did that, they would get in trouble. But I told them wouldn’t it be awesome if right when we were about to get punished, that someone showed up and stopped our mom and took our punishment instead of us.

That is what Jesus did for us. He took the punishment for our sins so that we don’t have to. Even though he was sinless, he died for our sins. This is really, really good news. But to make it even better, 3 days after he died on the cross, he rose from the grave.

Kid’s: Has anyone else ever rose from the grave? (no)

You might ask, so what’s the big deal if I sin? Well, here’s the big deal: because we’re sinners, we aren’t allowed to live in heaven with Jesus when we die. God is holy and without sin. He cannot allow sin in his presence. But Jesus loves you so much that he was willing to die for you. The Bible explains it like this

John 3:16 ESV

16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

God loved us so much that he sent Jesus here to earth. Jesus lived a perfect life. This means that Jesus never did anything bad. Jesus never picked on other kids, Jesus never disobeyed his mother and father, Jesus always loved his siblings. But because of all of the sin that we did, God sent Jesus to the cross to die for us. And whoever believes in him, will be able to be in heaven with God, forever. Now, this is the best news ever.

But is that it? After Jesus rose from the grave, do we have a “and everyone lived happily ever after”? No. People still break God’s law. People still do bad things. Hurricanes, tornados, and wildfires still happen. So is that it? Will this go on forever?

Well that leads us to our very last C word for VBS…

Seventh C: Consummation

The last C—Consummation—shows that God wins, and all goes back to very good again.

When we talk about this word, consummation, it means that things will be complete. So we are talking about the end of the story. The end of the story is beyond where we are right in this moment. We don’t know when it will happen. But we do know that it WILL happen.

Kid’s: I want you to think back over your time her at Vacation Bible School this week. What was something good that happened? What was something bad that happened? What was something sad that happened?

Life here can be pretty crazy sometimes. It doesn’t matter if you are a kid or an adult, life can be crazy. We don’t know what we should expect. Sometimes really good things might happen. But sometimes, really bad or sad things might happen. But did you know that the bible promises that for God’s children, that things will one day be wonderful again. Like they were before Adam and Eve sinned in the garden of Eden.

Revelation 21:4 ESV

4 He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”

Wow. Can you imagine that there is gonna be a day when there won’t be anymore sad things. We won’t be crying, we won’t have to worry about the people we love dying. No more sickness and no more pain. I don’t know about you, but I look forward to that day.

When we were talking about Jesus with the kids, they came to an understand that they need to do 3 things to be Christians.

Admit that they have sinned against God and need a savior.

Believe that Jesus is that savior because he was sinless and went to the cross for us. Not only that but that we

Forever receive Jesus as Lord and savior. If you only believe this for 5 minutes, then you aren’t forever receiving it. We must believe this forever. But this means that our lives will be different. We won’t be perfect. We will still sin. But we will always be trying to obey God’s law.

So that when the day comes when our lives here on earth are done, we can experience this forever with Jesus.

Conclusion

This was the challenge to our kids this week. But this is also the challenge for you here today. We call this the gospel of Jesus. That God created things perfect. But because of sin, we have experienced separation from God. We need to be brought back into fellowship with God and the only way that we can do that is through the sinless life, innocent death, and bodily resurrection of Jesus. And when we believe that all of those things happen for us, and we turn to Jesus, then we can forever receive him as Savior.

Maybe you have never done that. I want to encourage you, that if you feel like this is true for you, then you do that. Give your life to Jesus. If you want to talk more about that with me, I would love to talk to you. You can take the side of your bulletin and put your information on there and tear it off and leave it in your seat. Because I don’t want you leaving here today thinking that this is the end. Because this is only the starting line of being a Christian. You don’t have to do it alone. I am going to pray for us and we are going to sing one more song before we dismiss for our lunch.