Memory Verse:
John 4:50 (NKJV)
Jesus said to him, “Go your way; your son lives.” So the man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him, and he went his way.
Memory Verse Acrivity:
On page 7 of the PDF file that is linked to the web address above, the memory verse is written with a block background. Can it be printed out as a jigsaw puzzle?
Story:
What have you learned over the last few weeks from the book of John?
(Allow your students to share what they remember, helping and adding to, as
necessary. Answers should resemble the following.)
We have learned that Jesus is God and that He was baptized by John. God sent John to tell everyone about Jesus and to help them to be ready to turn to
Jesus.
We learned that Jesus went to a wedding in the town of Cana and changed water into wine. After that, Jesus went down to Jerusalem for the feast of the Passover. It was
there that He threw people out of the church because they were buying and
selling, making the church a place of business, instead of worshipping God.
Then, on His way back to Galilee, Jesus had to go through Samaria. In
Samaria, Jesus met a woman at a well. She believed in Him and trusted in
Him when He told her everything she had done. Many from her town believed also.
Jesus stayed in Samaria two days and then continued the trip He began earlier. When He arrived in Galilee, the people there welcomed Him and were excited to see Him. While Jesus was in the area of Galilee, He returned to Cana. In Cana, a very important man came to see Him. This man, an official, worked for the king* and had left his home in Capernaum, almost 22 miles away, to find Jesus. He had heard that Jesus was back in the area. The official’s son was very sick. He was so sick that he was about to die. The official begged Jesus to come to his home. He wanted Jesus to heal his son, to make
him better.
Jesus answered the man by saying to him and everyone around them, “You people just will not believe if you don’t see signs!” Well, if you can remember from our other stories in John, we have learned that Jesus does not
always answer the way we expect Him to. That’s because Jesus does not think
the way we think. He is not interested only in what we can see, He is interested in the things that will last forever. So, in
stead of just being concerned about an illness, Jesus was concerned that the people needed to see spectacular things in order to believe in Him. He wanted them to have faith. Faith is trusting, even when we don’t understand or can’t see how it will work. Jesus wanted the people to trust what God had said and see that He, Jesus, was
sent from God and is God’s Son. He wanted that to be enough for them.
The official, though, was only thinking about his little child. He asked Jesus, again, to come and heal him. He wanted Jesus to come before his son died. And Jesus told him, “Go; your son lives.” Jesus would not be going with him. The official had to make a decision. Did he believe that Jesus was powerful enough to heal his son, even from far away, when he could not see the results? Or, would he ask Jesus a bunch of questions and make excuses and not believe? Would the official have faith in Jesus? The Bible tells us that “the man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and started off.”
Just like that! The official believed and he headed home. On the way home, his servants met him with good news - his son was well! When he heard this, the official asked them what time it had been when his son got better and they told him that it had been around 1:00 in the afternoon.
Guess what?
The Bible tells us that the official knew that at that exact time is when Jesus had told him, “Go; your son lives!”
How amazing is that! Just by Jesus saying it, it was so. The Bible tells us that not only did the official trust in Jesus, but so did his whole family!
Well, how about you? Is faith easy? Is it easy to do something when it doesn’t make sense or if you don’t know how it will turn out? Do you think it was easy for the official to leave Jesus in Cana and head back home? Not really. But it is very important that we obey, immediately, when we know what Jesus wants us to do. If we wait (if the official
had waited), if we try to figure out how it is all going to work - we are not believing and we have disobeyed!
God wants us to trust him like the official did. And sometimes, many times, God wants us to trust Him without seeing spectacular things first. The first way that we can do that is to trust God’s word and believe that He loved us so much, that He sent His one and only Son to die for us and make a way for us to have a relationship with Him, and one day to live with Him forever.
Have you believed in Him - even though you can’t see Him?
Another way to trust God is to obey His word, the Bible.
Can you obey something you’ve never heard about or read?
NO! So, we are responsible for reading the Bible ourselves and for being at Bible Study so that we can hear it explained. Then, we should follow God obediently.
Prayer:
“Jesus, thank you for the Bible where we can read about you. Thank you, for making the little boy well. And thank you for helping me when I am sick. I Pray that we will not wait for spectacular signs and wonders to believe in Jesus. It is spectacular enough that the God who created the world, sent us His one and only Son! Amen"
Craft:
What I'm thinking is to have a small picture of a bed of a bed,
with a small slit cut in it at the line where the pillow and the cover meet, to colour in, and this small boy (make his smile a bit smaller)
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