Saturday, August 17, 2013

Second Cleansing - Youth Sunday School Lesson on John 13



Needed: (Optional: The Visual Bible)

Show the passage from The Visual Bible if you have it. If not, skip down to the reading.

Have your students take turns reading John 13.

Jesus knew that Peter was going to disown Him three times. Why didn’t Jesus send Peter away right then and tell him he couldn’t His disciple anymore?

Jesus said that someone who had been washed already is clean and only needs to wash their feet.

This has a parallel to baptism and repentance. Jesus had washed Peter of his sins when he was baptized and so he was mostly clean, but once in a while, Peter still did things that were wrong and so needed a little bit of washing to get rid of those things.

Peter making a mistake or sinning when he denied Jesus didn’t mean that he wasn’t a Christian any more. It just meant that he needed confess his sins and have those ones washed away. He was mostly clean already, but that was a new sin he needed to have washed away.

It’s the same with us. We believe in Jesus and so our sins have been washed away. But that doesn’t mean we’re perfect. We’re still going to make mistakes and we’re still going to get our spirits dirty with new sins.

So to be completely clean, we need to take time every once in a while to confess our sins to God and let Him clean us from those things.

One way you can do this is when you go to bed every night, simply think back on your day and ask God to search your heart. Ask Him, “Was there anything I did today that I shouldn’t have? Was there anything I could have done better?”

And listen for God to bring things to your mind. As He does, deal with those things. Ask for forgiveness and commit to doing better tomorrow.

We’re going to practice this right now. (Lead students in a time of prayer following the description above.)

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