Children's Sermon for Martin Luther King, Jr Memorial Day

Can anything good come out of Nazareth?
by Janet in MD

I have a Bible story for you today, about a guy who made a mistake. There was a man named Philip, who met Jesus and decided to follow him. Philip talked to Nathanael, and told him "I have met the one that Moses and the prophets told about! He is Jesus, from Nazareth." Well, Nathanael didn't know Jesus, but he knew Nazareth -- it was just a sleepy little town, nothing much exciting there. Nathanael just laughed and said "Hah! Can anything good come from Nazareth?"

Can you guess what Nathanael's mistake was? (let them guess). See, he thought that he knew all about Jesus just by knowing where he was from. And since he thought Nazareth wasn't very good, he thought Jesus couldn't be very good! What a huge mistake!

But then he met Jesus, and talked to him, and very quickly realized that Jesus is the Son of God, the King of Israel. Something really good had come out of Nazareth!

It is easy for us to make Nathanael's mistake. A lot of times we think we know about people because we know where they live, or what kind of car they drive, or what school they go to, or the shape of their bodies, or the color of their skin, or the language they speak. But none of those things tell us what a person is really like inside; none of those things help us see people the way God sees them.

Do you know what tomorrow is? Tomorrow is the day we remember Martin Luther King Jr. He was a strong Christian and a great leader who helped change some very bad laws we used to have in this country -- laws that separated people because of their skin color. You know what? I am sure that there were people in Martin Luther King's time who looked at him and said "Hah! Can anything good come out of Montgomery, Alabama? Can anything good come out of the mouth of a black man?" They didn't stop to listen to what he had to say, or get to know him. They made Nathanael's mistake.

Nathanael fixed his mistake by getting to know Jesus. We need to make sure that we take the time to get to know people too -- not just judge them by where they live or their skin color or their clothes. Because God can make something good come out of anybody, from anywhere, at anytime.