Children’s Sermon

Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

What’s Inside

When you’ve been playing outside have you come across a honey bee – those fat yellow bees with black stripes? They are always so busy gathering pollen as they buzz from one flower to the next. Pollen is what makes plants produce fruit and vegetables.

Honey bees use pollen as food. They carry the pollen on their back legs, turn it into honey, and store it in a bee hive. A bee hive is an exciting place. There is so much activity going on inside – thousands of bees (50,000) work there. Some bees build the hive. Others clean and guard the hive. And then there are those bees we see outside gathering pollen and bringing it back to the hive.

A bee hive is like an efficient factory that produces eighty pounds of extra honey each year; honey left after the bees have been fed. (Find an object to demonstrate the weight of eighty pounds.)

Honey bees are not mean and will not try to sting unless someone disturbs their hive. When that happens, the bees swarm out and try to protect their hive by stinging the person that is taking their honey.

This brings us to today’s lesson. We can think of a bee hive as being like our human heart. A bee hive is filled with sweet, nutritious honey. It is also filled with bees that can become angry and hurtful.

The Bible teaches us that “from within, out of the hearts of men, proceed evil thoughts…” (7:21).

Your heart can be filled with love that is sweet and precious to others. Your heart might also be filled with anger that may hurt those around you.

We can choose to fill our hearts with God’s love and have enough love left over to share with others––something that is sweet and precious.

Scripture quotations from the World English Bible