Use this Advent children’s sermon to teach children about the coming resurrection God has promised us.
Scripture: 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17
Needed: wedding ring, Advent wreath
Children’s Sermon
Ask students, Have any of you ever made a promise to someone?
Has anyone ever made a promise to you?
(Show a wedding ring.) Does anyone know what this is?
It’s a wedding ring. Why do you think a man and a woman give each other wedding rings when they get married?
The wedding ring shows that they are promising to love each other forever and ever. Do you see how the wedding ring goes around forever and ever? So, they’re promising to love each other forever and ever.
In the church, when it’s almost Christmas time, we use something that looks like a big ring. Can anyone think of what it is?
(Show students the Advent wreath.) This is our Advent wreath. It looks like a big wedding ring, and it goes around forever and forever just like a wedding ring because the Advent wreath reminds us that God has made promises to us, just like a man and a woman make promises to each other when they get married.
Can anyone think of some promises God has made to us?
During Advent, the time before Christmas, we remember that God promised in the Bible to send Jesus to die for our sins on the cross and to save us. God fulfilled that promise when Jesus was born, lived His life, and then died on the cross.
During Advent, we also remember that God promised to send Jesus again one day. Jesus will come down from Heaven and bring everyone who believes in Him back to life.
(Read 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17.)
For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever.”
We’ll also get our new bodies so that we’ll never die but live with Jesus forever. That’s what God promised us.
And we know that God will keep that promise because God is perfect and keeps all of His promises.
Closing Prayer
Father God, we thank You for sending Jesus to save us, and we thank You for promising to send Jesus back to earth one day so that we can come back to life just like He did. We know that You will keep Your promise because You are a good and perfect God. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
You can also find this children’s sermon for Kindle or in print in my book, Holy Days: Children’s Sermons for the Holidays.