Object lesson

This story is from an interview I did recently with a lady from Singapore.

Jessica* and her husband co-taught a Sunday school class for 10- and 11-year-olds in a Singapore church. She knew that these children had grown up going to church with their parents since they were toddlers, but they did not understand what the Bible’s message really meant.

Jessica used The Stranger on the Road to Emmaus and simple object lessons to bring out biblical truths.

One day, Jessica brought some homemade chocolate to class and gave each student a piece.

“This chocolate looks really tasty, doesn’t it?” she said. “Well, to make it, we used really good milk, high-quality cocoa and fine sugar."

"Yeah, it's really yummy," said one boy as he popped it in his mouth.

"Oh wait, don't eat it yet," Jessica said. "There's something else I haven't told you yet. In the course of preparing the chocolate, a little dog poop got mixed in.”

The boy's face turned bright green. The whole class screamed: "YUCK!!"

“Don’t worry,” Jessica assured them, “the other ingredients are all good. It was just one little tiny drop of poop. It still looks perfectly fine. It smells fine too. Go on, try it now.”

But the children refused to eat — and even touch — the chocolate.

Jessica used the object lesson to emphasize the effects of sin. “You may look all nice, clean and dressed up on the outside. You may even smell good, like the chocolate. But with just a little drop of sin in your life, your whole being is corrupted. Just as you don't want to eat and touch the chocolate with just a tiny drop of dog poop, God does not want to come near any sin.”

As Jessica continued to teach on the consequence of sin and the three types of death — physical, spiritual and eternal — the whole class became utterly terrified.

“We are all doomed for death,” one boy said. “There’s nothing we can do. We’re all in trouble.”

"I've been living badly up til now," another said. "Do you think it's too late to change and repent?"

These children had all grown up in Christian homes, but they had never taken the Bible so seriously. They hadn't seen themselves as helpless sinners deserving eternal condemnation.

“Their spiritual eyes were opened,” Jessica says. “They were totally grieved about man’s helpless situation. They were beginning to have a healthy fear of the Lord. My husband and I were so encouraged by the way the kids were responding — not with boredom or apathy, but with real awareness and understanding of the material. At the end of the class (and actually, it has been like this since we started the material), the kids refused to leave. They stayed put in their seats for another half hour just to talk about the Bible!"

*Name has been changed.