Materials
Cleaning supplies such as a broom, soap, cloth, detergent, scrub brush and scrub pad, window cleaner, brass polish, furniture polish, etc. Take a look under your sink or among your cleaning supplies and see what you can find. Warning: Do not open any chemicals or other cleansing agents as they can be irritants to skin and eyes. Some are even poisonous.
Activity
Bring all the cleaning supplies before the children and ask then to identify what they all have in common. Of course they are all cleaning supplies. Then have children name what each item is used for. You may wish to bring some dirty dishes, tarnished metal, etc. to demonstrate cleaning for the children. Have children look about the room for things that need to be cleaned. Some children, depending on their age may wish to help clean the room.
Application
Talk about the fact that sometimes when you are cleaning you have to use a lot of pressure. It is good that these things aren’t alive and don’t have feelings because it could be very painful. Let them rub a scrub brush or scrub pad along their skin to see that it can be painful, especially if you have to scrub very hard. Explain that sometimes pressure and discomfort or even pain is needed in order to clean something. Jesus was placed under immense pressure and incredible pain on the cross that we might be cleansed from our sin.
MORE IDEAS? See “Creative Object Lessons”
200 page e-book that explains everything you need to know when planning your very own object lessons. It contains 90 fully developed object lesson ideas and another 200 object lesson starter ideas based on Biblical idioms and Names / Descriptions of God.