Childrens Sermon Service

Object: Figs, usually dried. You can either just have one or two to show or have additional pieces to share with your children if that is appropriate.

Then he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree growing in his vineyard, and he went to look for fruit on it but did not find any. So he said to the man who took care of the vineyard, ‘For three years now I’ve been coming to look for fruit on this fig tree and haven’t found any. Cut it down! Why should it use up the soil?’

“‘Sir,’ the man replied, ‘leave it alone for one more year, and I’ll dig around it and fertilize it. If it bears fruit next year, fine! If not, then cut it down.’” (vv. 6-9)

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Hello, everyone! Are you ready for today’s story? (Let them respond.) Great! But first, who can tell me what I have here? (Show the figs and let them respond.) They are figs. Has anyone ever eaten a fig before? (Let them respond.)

Well, one day when Jesus was talking with a group of people, he told them a story about a man who owned a vineyard. Does anyone know what a vineyard is? (Let them respond.) It’s a place where people grow grapevines to harvest grapes, isn’t it? Jesus told them that the man who owned the vineyard lived in the city and had someone else take care of the vineyard for him. The owner only came to the vineyard once a year when it was time to harvest the grapes so he could take them back to town and sell them.

Well, one time when he came to the vineyard, he looked at one of the fig trees growing in the vineyard with the grapevines. When he looked closer, he saw that the fig tree did not have any figs on it and that made the owner angry. He called to the man who took care of the vineyard and said “I have looked at that fig tree for three years now, and I haven’t seen one fig that I could pick from it. If that tree isn’t going to grow any fruit on it, you need to cut it down and burn it. It is just using up good soil that the grapevines could use instead.”

The man taking care of the vineyard said they should not cut the tree down yet, but they should wait one more year and see if the tree grew any figs. The owner agreed to let the man keep the fig tree for one more year. But the owner thought the man was just wasting good soil on that little fig tree, and when he went back to his home in town, he told his friends about the crazy guy taking care of his vineyard, and how silly he was for taking care of a tree that wasn’t worth anything at all and should just be cut down. He told everyone that the man was just being foolish.

But the man in the vineyard wasn’t being foolish at all. He knew something that the owner did not know. The man taking care of the vineyard knew the little fig tree was a good tree and had been growing figs every year just like it was supposed to. And every year, the man had gone into the vineyard and picked all of the figs off of the little tree before the owner came to visit. Can anyone guess why he picked all of the figs off of the tree and didn’t leave them for the owner to see and pick? (Let them respond.) The man remembered something in the old book of Leviticus he had been taught when he was a little boy. He remembered that God told the people that when they planted a tree, they should not harvest the fruit of that new tree for the first three years but leave it all to nourish the soil to help the tree grow stronger. So, for the past three years, the man had gone to the vineyard and picked all of the fruit from the little tree to make the tree stronger, like God had said he should do. But the owner of the vineyard was not Jewish and had never been taught what God had said, so he just thought the man was being silly and foolish, and he made fun of him.

Let me ask you a question. Have you ever done something nice for someone and had someone else tease you or make fun of you because you did it? (Let them respond.) Or maybe they teased you or made fun of you because you would not do something you believed you should not do? (Let them respond.) Yeah, that happens to me, too. Sometimes people don’t understand when we do things that we have been taught God wants us to do. Things like caring about other people, and being nice to people, and not making fun of them, and not being mean to them, or not treating them differently.

They don’t understand why we are nice to others, and they make fun of us, and tease us, and pick on us because they think we are being foolish. They don’t understand that we are just doing what God has asked us to do; to love each other and take care of each other.

[Use this paragraph if you have figs to give to each child.] Would anyone like to taste a fig and see what they are like? (Let them respond and offer a piece of fig to those who want to try them.) Maybe the sweet taste will help us remember our story about the man and the fig tree.

I hope you will remember how much God loves you, and how much God wants us to love other people and help them know how much God loves them, too.

Let’s have our prayer and ask God to help us remember to do the things God wants us to do to take care of each other.

Prayer:
Dear God, thank you for reminding us how much you love us. Please help us remember that you love all of the people you have created and help us let the people around us know that we love them just like Jesus loves us. Amen.