EUREKA
15 mins
Divide into small groups. Give each group four glasses and three knives and ask them to do the ‘Three knife scaffold’ challenge (watch the instruction video at premieryouthwork.com/ links). When they’ve tried a few experiments and failed, show them how it’s done.
Ask the young people how we make discoveries and explain that it’s often by trying lots of things that fail. Point out that sometimes we stumble on real discoveries by accident when we’re actually doing the wrong thing. Penicillin has saved millions of lives, but Alexander Fleming discovered it when he went on holiday and failed to clean up his lab or close the window properly. When he came back, a strange mould had grown in a petri dish (YouTube has several clips telling the story. See other examples of accidental discoveries at premieryouthwork.com/links).
Read Matthew 2:1-8. The wise men studied astrology, which we now know has no scientific value. But through it they stumbled on the biggest discovery of all: that right then, a new king was being born who would transform the world. And once they’d got that message, they did four things that were important...
FIRST: THEY WENT
10 mins
Sometimes people make discoveries and do nothing about them. Show the group your egg box. Break an egg onto a plate. Tell them you can break an egg over someone’s head and make no mess. Will somebody trust you? Break the prepared egg on your willing volunteer and… no mess!
Ask the young people if any of them thought that would work. It took one person actually trying it out to prove it could happen. Show your young people a map of the Parthian Empire (the magi’s most likely home) to show how far they may have travelled (premieryouthwork.com/ links). They travelled for something between 950 and 4,000 miles. A camel does 18-25 miles a day. Ask someone who is good at maths to work out the shortest and longest time the journey would have taken. This teaches us something about commitment. If we sit on the sidelines, we will never make the big discoveries. We need to get stuck in.
KEY POINT 1
The people who make big discoveries about God will be those who are prepared to try things out for themselves.
SECOND: THEY WENT WRONG
10 mins
Test your young people with some puzzles:
- A fire breaks out on an aeroplane. One passenger hurls himself out of the emergency door in desperation. He doesn’t die. Why? (The plane is on the ground.)
- A man looks out of a window, desperate to open it, yet knows that opening it will kill him. Why? (He’s in a submarine and air is running out.)
- Romeo and Juliet lie dead on the floor surrounded by water and broken glass. How did they die? (They’re goldfish – the tank broke.)
People sometimes don’t get the answers because they have a wrong picture in their heads. What (very natural) wrong impression did the wise men have about the baby king? But they didn’t give up, they just accepted that God’s plan was different from their first impression and went on again.
Ask your young people when people today might give up going where God wants, just because it seems too crazy to them. Might we be making some wrong assumptions about Jesus because we have the wrong picture in our heads?
THIRD: THEY WORSHIPPED
10 mins
Here’s Matthew 2:9-11 in the ‘Totally Inaccurate Version’. In small groups, correct it and work out why those five changes are vitally important (you can find the answers by comparing it to the original):
‘After they had promised the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen all the way so far went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they took measurements. On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they took some selfies then asked for a cup of tea. Then they opened their timetables and looked for the time of the next bus back to Jerusalem.’
The Magi went wrong and sorted it out, and then when they arrived, they worshipped. They realised they were in the presence of something much bigger than themselves. Most people miss the real wonder of Christmas because they’re just looking at the surface of it. This year will you just watch? Or worship?
KEY POINT 2
To get to know Jesus, you need to be prepared to worship him as king. Sightseers and tourists never understand him properly.
FOURTH: THEY WENT HOME
10 mins
Read Matthew 2:12 and point out that God gave the magi a dream. He’d previously given directions via the skies, the scriptures and a moving star. So why the dream? What might this tell us? Some ideas might be:
- They were getting used to hearing from God now. He doesn’t use the same method every time. As we make increasing discoveries about him, we start to hear his voice and receive his guidance in ways we wouldn’t have been ready for previously. They had learnt a lot about God by seeing the baby.
- God’s guidance comes when we need it – not before. And he tells us as much as we need to know – no more. The wise men were given the dream at just the right moment, and although they probably never realised why Herod hated the baby so much, they were able to do just what God wanted at the right moment.
- The dream was an extra demonstration to them that God had a lot invested in this baby. He was absolutely determined to keep him safe: Jesus had a vital, world-changing job to do.
WRAP UP
10 mins
Go back over the four things the wise men did. Challenge people to think about the implications of the whole story for us. Are we prepared to take action and explore Jesus for ourselves? Are we prepared to examine our assumptions and check we’ve got the right picture? Are we prepared to be worshippers, not just onlookers? And are we getting to know God better through this whole process? Pray for your young people, asking God to make this Christmas a time when they understand more and know him better.
