Items Needed:

1 shiny new penny

A dirty (discolored) penny for each child

A small condiment size container for each child

A bottle of ketchup

A package of wet towelettes

Paper towels

Preparation:

Pass out the pennies and containers so each child has one each on the table in front of them. Tell the children to take a good look at their penny. Ask them what date is on the penny.

Squirt a little ketchup in each container and have each child drop their penny in the ketchup. Then squirt some ketchup on top of the penny, so that it is covered.

Lesson:

Those pennies are really dirty, aren’t they. Who remembers the year on their penny? Wow, that one’s older than you are.

(Show the children the shiny new penny.) Look at this shiny new penny. It was made this year. See how shiny it is. That’s because pennies are coated with copper. As it gets older, more people will touch it. Maybe it will be dropped on the ground a lot. Maybe it will be in somebody’s dirty pocket. Before long, it will probably look just like the dirty pennies that we covered with Ketchup.

Just like pennies get dirty, people do too. You might get germs at school from touching somebody’s desk. You might get dirty playing baseball and sliding into home. You might get tackled in football. You might get your hands and face dirty eating something messy. Somebody might spill something on you. We all get dirty sometimes.

Do you know that just like we can get dirty on the outside, we can be dirty on the inside too? David wrote in Psalms 51:10 Create in me a clean heart. David was asking the Lord to create a clean heart in him, because David knew his heart was dirty. It didn’t have cookie crumbs in it or grass stains. David knew that he had committed sins. That’s what was in his heart. David was asking God to wash away the sins from his heart.

We need to ask Jesus to wash away all the bad things from our heart. The bible teaches us that we have all sinned, and we deserve to be punished for our sins, but Jesus loves us so much that he took the punishment for our sins by shedding His blood on the cross. If we really believe that, and ask Jesus to forgive us, He will wash away our sins with His blood and give us a clean heart.

Everybody put your hands on your lap and keep them there until I tell you to move them.

Put a wet towelette in front of each child.

Do you know why we put ketchup on our pennies? I heard that ketchup would make old pennies shine like new. We’re going to find out if that is true in a minute. But we should always remember that the blood of Jesus will give us a clean heart.

When I tell you to, I want you to carefully remove the penny from the ketchup and rub it between your fingers to see if you can make it shine. Then wipe your fingers and the penny on the wet towelette.

*For best results the pennies should stay in the ketchup for 10 – 20 minutes.