We got back to some basics tonight and spoke to the kids about salvation.....what it is and what it means. To do this, we did a few "egg"cellent experiments.
First, we showed the kids an egg and talked about how God created Adam and Eve as good, perfect, and in His very own image. He created them to love and do what is right and true and kind. Then....sin came along. To demonstrate the fall, we dropped our egg from about 2 feet into a glass bowl. When Adam and Eve fell into sin by disobeying God, it was like the egg falling into the bowl. After the fall, everyone born was born into sin....broken...."scrambled up". The perfect image of God in us was shattered like the egg in the bowl.
Still, look in the bowl. You can still tell that it's an egg, even though it's all messed up. In the same way, people are still God's children, even after they fall into sin.
God still loves us. He sent His Son Jesus to save us. When we receive His salvation, He gives us new hearts so we can love Him. It would take a miracle to put our broken egg back together. It takes a miracle to change our broken lives and make them whole again...the miracle of Jesus' love for us.
AND GOD CHOOSES US. THERE IS NOTHING WE CAN DO TO EARN OUR SALVATION. There are no amount of good works or attitudes, no amount of money we can give to charities, no number of mission trips we can go on....that can earn us our salvation and make us right with God.
So what does our salvation look like? We used a glass bowl again and this time filled it with water. We let the kids each take turns naming different sins as they sprinkled some pepper into the water to "dirty it up". Every one of us has some "pepper" in our lives! ALL have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). But when we come to Jesus, ask His forgiveness for those sins, and then choose to turn away from them (repent), God is faithful and just and He will forgive us of those sins (1 John 1:9). With that, we put one drop of Dawn dish soap into the middle of our peppered bowl of water and watched as our sins were "removed from us as far as the east is from the west" (Psalm 103:12).
It doesn't mean we'll never have "pepper" in our lives again because we will....over and over and over again. But EVERY single time we ask Jesus for that forgiveness and turn from our sins, He WILL forgive us and remove them from us.
So can you lose your salvation once you have it?
NO! No one can snatch us out of the Father's hand! NO ONE!
To demonstrate this, we turned back to our eggs. Do you know that, if you wrap your fist evenly around a raw egg, and squeeze as hard as you can, you will not be able to break the egg?! It's because the force and pressure of your squeeze is being spread out over the whole surface of the eggshell. The egg is designed so it won't easily break in the outdoors and the wild. The egg's shape and its shell are made so it will protect the baby growing inside until it is ready to hatch and come out into the world. That's how a mother bird can sit on her eggs and not break them! Isn't God the best architect ever?!!
So, once saved, we are the contents of that egg. God is the protective shell around us. The hand represents the world, squeezing us and forcing us into difficult circumstances and situations, evil coming at us from all directions. But God is good! He is all around us, protecting us, shielding us under His mighty wings.
Psalm 91:1-7 - Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, “He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.” Surely he will save you from the fowler’s snare and from the deadly pestilence. He will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge; his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart. You will not fear the terror of night, nor the arrow that flies by day, nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness, nor the plague that destroys at midday. A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you.
It was an "eggs"troidinary object lesson we hope the youth will not soon forget!
