Teaching Kids About Worship

This week in my character development series I am teaching kids about worship. As I was thinking about worship, I thought about the verse where Jesus said that if he had to hush his followers, even the rocks would cry out. Let us visit that passage now.

“The whole crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen: ‘Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!’

Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, ‘Teacher, rebuke your disciples!’

‘I tell you,’ he replied, ‘if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.’” – Luke 19:37-40

The Pharisees are not happy. Jesus was creating quite a stir and people were starting to recognize him as sent by God. The crowds were also beginning to show signs of a desire to follow and even worship Jesus. Matthew 2:2, 8, 11, Matthew 28:9, Matthew 14:3, Matthew 28:17, John 9:38, and Hebrews 1:6 all show times Jesus was worshipped. Jesus never turned down worship when it was offered. John 10: 31-33 further shows that the Pharisees were ready to stone Jesus because of his claims to be God. John 1:1-14 also is more support that the Bible teaches that Jesus is God and therefore should receive worship. For a good article on the topic of “Was Jesus Worshipped?,” visit Stand to Reason.

Some people don’t want to believe this. They say it’s just not true despite the Biblical evidence. They also say that they can accept Jesus as a good, moral teacher but just not God in the flesh. C.S. Lewis wrote a book called “Mere Christianity.” Here is an famous excerpt from this book (which I definitely recommend):

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. … Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God” (pg. 54-56).

Lewis goes on to show that Jesus says he can forgive people of their sins, that he will return and judge the world and that he has always existed. As shown above, he also accepted worship. If he is not Lord, then he is definitely a lunatic or a liar and cannot therefore be a good and moral teacher.

I had to go through my own journey of faith (which doesn’t come easy to me) to see the evidence and trust the things that still don’t make sense to me about God and the Bible. Once I land on faith, I realize that the Bible teaches that we should worship Jesus and if we don’t, “even the stones will cry out.” This leads us to our craft. I thought it would be fun to make rocks that look like they are crying out in worship to the Lord.

Let me first show you how to create a mouth out of paper.

1. Fold Paper in Half.

2. Draw or visualize a line from the fold side of the paper to the middle of your paper.

3. Cut on your line.

4. Fold two flaps down from your line and crease the edge to create two triangle flaps.

5. Once the flaps are creased, return both sides to the original position.

6. Open the paper.

7. This is a bit of the tricky part and might take a few tries to get completely right. Push the triangle through to the other side of the paper using your finger or thumb.

8. Do the same with the other side. Then, close the card flat and crease all your folded edges. It will look like there is a triangle taken out of the paper along the folded edge.

9. Open this up and you have your mouth.

I wanted to add the photo above to help you see what your paper will look like after step 8.

Let’s take what you learned about making a mouth into our “stones will cry out” project. The kids will want to fold a paper in half and then cut out the shape of a stone, being careful of where the fold is and opening it up to make sure they have the shape they like for their stone.

Then, you will go through all the steps to make a mouth with your stone shape.

Once your stone with an open mouth is created, take a dark piece of paper and fold it down the center. Glue the rock down (avoiding the mouth) and line up the fold of the rock with the fold of the under paper.

Glue down google eyes. Thanks to Craft Project Ideas for providing the google eyes.

I typed out the verse Luke 19:37-40 and cut it out. I made a printable for you to make your life easier.

The kids can then glue down the verse to complete their “Stones Will Cry Out” crafts.

Here’s a few pictures of the kids doing the project:

Abby was really proud when she was able to get her mouth sorted after the tricky 7th step. I would practice before you work with the kids.