Materials
Can of spray paint, mothballs, and a ziplock bag, and separately, some molded bread, some rotten fruit, a rusted peice of metal, and a cloth rag that has a hole worn in it. (You can grind the cloth on a piece of concrete using your foot to make a hole.)

Activity
Show the Can anyone tell me what I have here? That’s right, this is a can of spray paint, these are mothballs, and this a padlock. They may not seem to have a lot in common, but actually they do. Each of them is used to protect something. The paint covers objects made of metal and protects them from rust; the mothballs are put in a closet with clothes to protect them from moths and keep them from rotting; and the ziplock bag is used to put food in so that it does not spoil as quickly.

Application
Show them what can happen without protection. Metal will rust out, cloth can get eaten by moths, and food can spoil. What we don’t realize is that rust starts with one little spot and it keep growing. One small hole in a cloth can become a huge one, and one little rotten spot or molded spot on a piece of bread leads to the whole bread becoming molded. It is the same with sin.. one little sin can lead to very bad things.

MORE IDEAS? See “Creative Object Lessons”
200 page e-book that explains everything you need to know when planning your very own object lessons. It contains 90 fully developed object lesson ideas and another 200 object lesson starter ideas based on Biblical idioms and Names / Descriptions of God.
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