GAMERS Series: Scripture Twisters

You'll go a little old school and use tongue twisters and the Hasboro game Twister (buy online) as metaphors for how "scripture twisters" (2 Peter 3:17) try to trip us up in our walk with God. We did this as a Wednesday night series, but you could easily add praise and worship music and other elements to create a kid's church sermon. From the crinkled up game mat in the photo, you can tell our church kids had a ton of fun.


(All scripture verses were used from The Message:Remix.)




Lesson Outline:

I. Scripture Twister Word Jumble
Let the kids find and circle the words in tonight's Bible lesson which are concealed and hid within a jumble of other words. After finishing, they get a piece of candy. Let the kids take turns reading aloud the memory verse.

II. Tongue Twisters
Let the kids draw pieces of paper from a hat, bag, or your hand. Each piece of paper will have a silly tongue twister on it. Let the kids have fun trying to say their tongue twisters. Discuss how you intentionally worded the phrases difficult for the kids to say, so they would trip up and have a hard time.

III. Scripture Twisters Lesson
Who in here has ever opened up their Bible, read a little, and had a tough time understanding the verses? Sometimes the Bible can be difficult to understand. I'm a grown up, and I still have a hard time knowing what it means every now and then. You know, the disciple Peter said this very thing about his friend Paul's letters. Paul wrote a lot of letters (open Bible and name a few of his letters or ask the kids if they can name any of Paul's letters for a piece of candy) and boy are there some difficult to understand things in his letters! Paul wrote the truth to the churches and believers, but the things he wrote about could be really hard to understand sometimes. People were twisting his words around and confusing themselves. Most simply didn't understand what Paul meant, but some were intentionally twisting his words around.

There are still people today who twist words in the Bible around. Peter called them lawless and loose-talking teachers... Today we'll be referring to them as scripture twisters. As in Peter and Paul's day, some scripture twisters, twist around scriptures because they themselves are confused. Other scripture twisters try to twist Bible verses and events around to confuse us. Why? Because they don't believe He exists or maybe they do, but they don't love him like we do. They are mean and sneaky. They like to read us or tell us Bible verses but twist the words around to confuse us and trip us up in our walk with God. Like here's a silly example. Sometimes Sunday School teachers will ask this question: "How many animals did Moses take on the ark?" If you're not paying attention to the question you might jump up and say, "TWO!!! HE TOOK TWO!!!" But is that true? No, because Moses didn't take any animals on the ark. It was Noah who built the ark. See how I twisted the words around and caught you off guard? That was just a silly example. 

Well, other people will twist around the wording of scripture in much more serious ways to trick you. If you haven’t been reading your Bible and learning your Bible verses, you might get tripped up and lose your footing. Who has ever played the game Twister? We are actually going to play the game tonight. But first, we are going to get (VOLUNTEER) to do a little demonstration for us.

(Ask volunteer to do what you tell them. This works best if the volunteer is an adult who can intentionally help prove your point and play along. Try to intentionally make it where the person gets all jumbled up and loses their footing and falls)

What happened to (volunteer)? They fell. Why did they fall? Because their feet got all twisted up and they couldn’t stand anymore, could they? That’s what our Bible verse talks about, isn’t it? People try to twist the Bible around so we get confused, stumble, and fall. But how do we keep from getting confused???? WE READ AND KNOW OUR BIBLE! And how do we make sure we don’t stumble and fall???? WE LISTEN CAREFULLY WHEN PEOPLE SPEAK!!!

IV. Play Twister
Let the kids end the night by playing twister. It may not seem like it has much to do with the lesson, but perhaps it will serve as a great conversation starter between the kids and their parents about the Bible lesson.