Sermon

The Story Book

Theme

Bible study

Object

Storybook (not a picture book) that your children are unlikely to know

Scripture

"Praise be to you, O Lord; teach me your decrees. With my lips I recount all the laws that come from your mouth. I rejoice in following your statutes as one rejoices in great riches. I meditate on your precepts and consider your ways. I delight in your decrees; I will no neglect your word." Psalm 119:12-16

I brought a storybook today. It's called...(name of book). It has lots of pages and words. I'd like to share this story with you, but I don't want to read the entire book. That would take too much time. So, I'll just read a little of it. Let's get started. (Read first paragraph of book.)

Isn't this story great? What do you think happened next? You don't know? Oh, maybe I need to read something from the middle of the book to help us figure it out. (Read anything from middle of book.) Now do you know what happened? No?

Well, how do you think the story ends? Would you like to hear it? [Read last paragraph of book.] Now did you like the story? No? Why not? I didn't read enough of the story, did I? If we really wanted to know what happens in this book, I'd need to read the whole thing, all the words on all the pages. Right?

The Bible is a lot like this storybook. It has lots of pages and words, and many people don't want to read entire thing. They just look at parts of it and think they know the whole story. But when we read only little parts of my book, we couldn't figure it out what happened and it didn't make a good story, did it?

It's the same with the Bible. The Bible is the story of God and His people (that's us) and if we want to know the whole story, we need to read the whole Bible. Not all at once, but a little at a time. Maybe you can have someone like Mom or Dad help you read it. (And I know this story has a really great ending!)

Lord, thank you for giving us your story in the Bible. Help us to read it all so that we can know you better. Amen.