Object Lesson for Adults: August 5, 2012
Trust
Exodus 16:2-4, 9-15 • Psalm 78:23-29 • Ephesians 4:1-16 • John 6:24-35
Your object is an umbrella. As you begin to preach your object lesson. Open the umbrella. You might sit down and pause for a moment with the open umbrella. You might walk around the sanctuary a bit with the umbrella.
If you live in an area experiencing drought, engage members of the congregation in talk about the weather and how it is affecting them. Are they complaining? Are they praying for rain?
Point out that if they are praying for rain and they trust God, they ought to be carrying an umbrella wherever they go.
The umbrella, in this case, is the symbol of trust.
God WILL provide. It is our job to trust and accept His help!
Point to the Old Testament lesson for the day — the story of how God provided his discontented people with manna in the morning and quail in the evening.
There is more to this story, some of it told in Numbers, chapter 11. The full narrative includes the account of God’s anger and Moses’ angry exasperation with the people he is trying to lead. Getting people to trust God isn’t easy!
But the lesson today is about God providing faithfully for his people, even when they don’t seem to deserve it.
That may be enough for today’s object lesson.
There is more to the lessons for the day. Jesus relies on common knowledge of this story, refreshed by his recent miraculous feeding of the multitude with bread and fish, and extending the metaphor to his own purpose on earth. He is the Bread of Life.
He is playing with them a bit in his teaching style just as you are playing with the congregation in walking about with an umbrella in church.
People are no different today than in Moses’s or Jesus’ time. We want assurance that our physical needs will be met. You’ll pray for many of them later in the service.
Do we truly trust that God will answer our prayers?
Silently put your umbrella away.