Judging Others Matthew 7:1-5
Teaching Videos
Idea 1
Give the kids activities to do while wearing different types of eye patches.
Give the kids different types or eye patches. Give some that cover one eye, and others that are full blindfolds.
Then give them all different tasks to do, like going up to a leader and giving them a high five then kicking a soccer ball into a net (each kid can take a turn shooting).
Once you are finished let the kids take their eye patches off and have a conversation. Ask them what they thought of the people who see out of one eye compared to the people who couldn’t see at all? Did anyone laugh when someone who had a blindfold on tried to take a shot a missed?
Tell them that our bible story today talks about having things in our eyes, but instead of worrying about what is in our own eyes, we judge people about what is in their eye. This might seem sort of confusing but it’s kind of like our game. Everyone who could see out of one eye laughed at the people who were totally missing their soccer shots because they couldn’t see at all. We were more interested in the people who couldn’t see at all rather than worrying about how we could only see out of one eye.
Teaching Ideas
Idea 2
Bring in some food that looks good but taste bad.
Bake some cookies in half of the cookies add a lot of salt.
Put all the cookies mixed on a platter and tell the kids that you made them some cookies to eat.
Let them each pick a cookie and then start eating (half of them should notice the salt right away).
Ask the kids what’s wrong, and let them explain. Talk about how all the cookies look the same on the outside, but they aren’t the same on the inside.
Ask them what would need to happen for the cookies to be good. (the ingredients would need to change). Explain to the kids that for us to change we can’t just put on different clothes or try to act different, our hearts need to change. Jesus is the one who changes our hearts.
Idea 3
Compare a toothpick to a big stick.
Bring in a toothpick and a big stick and show them to the kids.
Talk about how big a stick is compared to a toothpick and how we wouldn’t want either in our eyes.
Ask the kids why we would talk about someone who had a toothpick in their eye when we have a big stick in our own eye.
Explain to them that the big stick is something we need to work on in our own lives and the toothpick is something small that we notice that others need to work on. We need to focus on the things we need to work on rather than noticing everyone else’s small problems.
Idea 4
Think about things we need to work on.
Explain to the kids that in this story the log represents something we need to work on and it probably is something big.
Give an example or a few examples from your own life of things you are working on.
Ask the kids if they have anything they are working on - make a list of all the things you are working on as a group.
Then hand out paper masks to the kids and let them draw some of the things they are working on.
Idea 5
Play a guessing game with mystery bags.
Set up 4 or 5 bags with an object inside each bag. (the bags shouldn’t be transparent)
Hold each bag up one at a time, let a kid come up and shake the bag and feel on the outside.
Let the kids try to guess the objects.
After each object has been guessed talk about how it is easy to judge something without knowing all the facts.