Key Verse

Matthew 7:16-18

Additional Verses

Matthew 12:33; Luke 6:43; John 15:2

Materials Needed

• Plastic fruit

Object Lesson

(Hold up a piece of plastic fruit.)

Here I have a nice big piece of juicy fruit! Seeing it makes me want to take a big bite! Would you like to try it? There is a big problem with this fruit though! Do you know what it is? (Drop the fruit so it is obvious that it is fake.) It isn’t real!

That would be pretty disappointing if you were really hungry and ran into your house and tried to take a bite out of this! That wouldn’t be very good at all.

In Matthew 7:17 it says that a good tree is known by good fruit and a bad tree is known by bad fruit. Do you think this fruit is good or bad? I wouldn’t want to eat it because it is fake. Sometimes people try to do things to make others think that they are following Christ and serving Him, but really they are just faking it and they are empty inside. They are not producing real fruit. Maybe you go to church and dress all fancy and sing loudly so others will think that you are close to God, but when you leave church you are mean and unkind to others. Is your fruit real or is it fake?

We need to make sure that the fruit that we are producing is real fruit that brings glory and honor to God and that we aren’t just trying to make ourselves look good.