Key Verse:

[Psa 119:15 NIV] I meditate on your precepts and consider your ways.

Additional Verses:

Psalms 1:1-3; Joshua 1:8

Materials Needed:

• 1 Jar of pickle “chips” (or enough for each person to have one pickle plus a few for you to use)
• 1 Cucumber sliced into rounds (or enough for each person to have one slice plus a few for you to use.
• Condiment cups to fit one pickle and one slice of cucumber (one per person)
• A slotted spoon that will fit in the jar
• Paper towels (to clean any mess)

Preparation:

Before class, remove some of the pickles from the jar, leaving some pickles behind as well as the pickle juice.  You will use this jar to dip the cucumbers in.  Pre-slice your cucumbers into rounds and dip them for a second into the pickle juice and take them out.  Create a sample for each person to taste by placing one pickle slice and one cucumber slice that has been dipped into condiment cups.  Lean the slices away from each other in the cups if possible so the cucumber doesn’t take on too much pickle flavor.  

Object Lesson:

Do you guys like pickles?  Who can tell me what a pickle tastes like?  (Allow for answers: salty, sour, tangy).  Now did you know that a pickle is just a slice of cucumber?  If it’s just a slice of cucumber, where does all of that flavor come from?  (Allow for answers).  That’s right!  It comes from the pickle juice which has some vinegar, spices.  How do all of those flavors get inside of that cucumber?  Well the cucumber slices have been in this pickle juice for a long time, so long that they have absorbed all of the flavor of this pickle juice and they have been transformed into a tasty pickle.  That’s called marinating.  The cucumbers have been marinating in this pickle juice so much that they have taken on its flavor.  

In the Bible, in Psalms 119:15, someone prayed this to God “I meditate on your precepts and consider your ways.”  That word meditate is kind of like the word marinate.  Meditating means that we think about something over and over and we focus on it and we try to absorb its meaning.  Kind of how these pickles have marinated in the pickle juice and absorbed the flavor.  What the Bible is teaching us here is that we should read and think about God’s Word a lot and meditate on it and figure out what it means and we should consider God’s ways so that we can truly become more like Jesus.

Sometimes as Christians, we don’t spend enough time meditating on God’s Word.  We might go to church once in a while, but then we skip a few weeks or maybe we intend to read the Bible every day but we only get up early enough once a week to do it.  Then we wonder why we aren’t getting stronger in our faith and not being transformed.  

That’s like taking these cucumbers and dipping them in the pickle juice and then taking them right out (drop a few cucumbers in the liquid and take them right out with the slotted spoon).  Do you think these cucumbers are going to taste like pickles?  Let’s see.  (Hand out the samples).  Wait for me, we will eat them together.  Let’s eat the pickle first.  (Eat the pickle). Wow! that has so much flavor, it’s so good.  Now let’s try the cucumber that was only in the pickle juice for a second.  (Eat the cucumber slice).  Does it taste as flavorful as the first one we ate?  No!  Why not?  (Allow for answers).  That’s right, because they haven’t spent enough time in the pickle juice to absorb its flavor, they haven’t had the time to transform into a pickle. See, we need to spend a lot of time in God’s Word, reading it over and over and thinking about it so we can absorb it and understand its meaning and allow it to transform our lives.