Children’s Sermon

1 Corinthians 15:12-20

First Fruits

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1 Corinthians 15:12-20

First Fruits

By Richard Niell Donovan

OBJECTS: If possible, bring seasonal fruit, washed and nicely displayed in a bowl, to show the children.

Do you like fruit? Most of us do––especially if the fruit is fresh and ripe and juicy. These days, most supermarkets have fresh fruit of some sort all year around, but that wasn’t always so. In the olden days, people would do their best to keep apples through the winter, but it wasn’t easy. If they put the apples outside, they would freeze. If they kept them inside, they would be too warm and would spoil. Usually, people kept apples in a cellar that they had dug in the ground. If they were careful, they could have apples through most of the winter, but the time usually came when they had no fresh fruit at all.

In fact, fresh fruit was so scarce in those days that parents would often give their children one or two pieces of fruit as Christmas presents. You probably wouldn’t be very happy if your parents gave you two apples for Christmas, but that’s because you are used to having fresh fruit all year long. If you had not had an apple for several months, you would be glad to get a nice fresh apple.

In the Bible, there was something that the Israelites call “first fruits.” First fruits were the first fruits to be harvested in the springtime. They were the first apples from the trees––or the first grapes from the vines. The people would have looked forward all winter to having fresh apples or grapes––but do you know that they did with those first fruits? They gave them as an offering to God. Why would they do that? They would do that to show God that they loved him. That was their way of showing God that they put God first in their lives.

What can you give God to show him that you love him? You could pray. In your prayer you could tell God that you love him.

Scripture quotations from the World English Bible

Copyright 2013, Richard Niell Donovan