The BackDoor Bible Series

The Journey - Lesson 2

"Spinaker"

(The Tree that the manager was made from .. adapted from "A Tale of Three Trees")

  

Introduction:

In the next 10 weeks we will be going on a journey. All of us are on a journey in our life to find out if we will find God. This journey is a series of lessons to help you know the way to God. The sets behind us represent the journey and each step is marked by a tree. (explain sets)

 Each step on the journey is marked by a tree. You see trees are cool and we can learn a lot from them. So in each lesson each week we will learn something about God and our journey to him from a tree. Lets get started.

The first tree we find on our journey is the Christmas tree. Does anyone know what Christmas celebrates - Yes that right, the birth of Jesus. Well let me tell you a story about our first tree.

 

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Once long, long ago, there once was a young tree that grew on a hill overlooking the sea (like this one point to set) . Now the trees name was "Spinnaker because "Day after day the tree watched as great ships sailed into and out of the harbor nearby and a spinnaker is he big sail out in front of great sailing ship. You see the ships fascinated Spinnaker for unlike him, they got to go to all sorts of distant places, see new sights and carry great treasures. Of course being a tree he could not move. So he often pretended he was a ship.

 Now Spinnaker knew when he was full grown, he,.. like the others around him, would be cut down and taken to the saw mill in the nearby town, so year after year he hoped that when his turn came to be made into lumber, he could be made into greatest sailing ship the world had ever seen so he could carry great treasures all over the world.

 Well one summer , the day finally came when Spinnaker saw two men approaching with axes and he almost yelled for joy (of course trees can't yell) but if they could, this one would have been heard for miles. Here I go he thought, as he fell to the ground and was being dragged out of the forest, I am about to become a great ship and carry great treasures. I can hardly wait. ..

 But much to the trees disappointment, Spinnaker was not taken to a ship yard. Instead he was taken to small furniture makers shop where instead on being made in to a ship he was made into a rough wooden trough used to feed animals. The next day he was sold to a man who took him to a small village and put him in a cave he used as a stable for his animals.. As you can imaging S Spinnaker was mighty sad. Instead of become a great ship Spinnaker became a 'donkeys dish'.

 Now the summer had passed and winter was here and it was one of those days when the sun is out but the wind is still very cold . These days Spinnaker was pretty bored cause the only thing he ever got to do was hold hay for donkeys to eat. But what Spinnaker didn’t know is that was about to change.

 It was an uncommonly bright night, in fact it was one of the brightest nights Spinnaker could remember. Suddenly Spinnaker heard voices and before he knew it a man and a woman stepped into the stable. Now Spinnaker was used to seeing people, for the man who owned the stable came in from time to time put fresh hay into Spinnaker and other brought their donkeys in, but these people were different somehow. They did not bring a donkey in with them and they did not leave quickly as others did cause this stable, just like all others, really smelled bad.

But it was what happened next that made Spinnaker gasp. For the woman went, lied down in one of the places the donkeys usually slept and gave birth to a child. Yep, you heard right. Had a baby right their in the stable. There right in front of Spinnaker the man clumsily balanced a screaming, squirming infant in the crook of one arm. He was trying vainly to wash the child with his free hand. Spinaker could see that the baby had just been born and even in the darkness I could see he was sill covered with blood. The father was dipping a cloth into a trough similar to Spinnaker that was filled with filthy . It was icy cold and each time the rag was applied to the baby's body, he screamed even louder.

 Spinnaker listened as the woman called from where she lay and told the man to get the swaddling clothes out of one of their baskets. She then told him how to wrap the boy in the long cotton strips. When the man finished wrapping the child the first time he took it over to show the woman. "Too loose", she said, so he started over again this time binding the child so tightly that it looked like he was preparing him for death.

 When he finished, Spinnaker watched as the man took the child to his mother to nurse but she was asleep. The man stopped and looked around for a minute as though looking for something. An then the most amazing thing happened. The man turned, walked towards Spinnaker and laid the baby right in his trough.

 Suddenly Spinnaker was no longer just an old feeding trough in a cave. He was a cradle holding the greatest treasure this world would ever see. In a moment Spinnaker knew that his wish to hold a great treasure had come true for Spinnaker was the manger that Jesus was laid in when he was born. Spinnaker, the tree who wanted to carry a great treasure, was carrying the Son of God.

 Within a few minutes, all the cave was suddenly aglow as the torches of a dozen shepherds gathered around Spinnaker as they worshiped the newborn king. God had granted Spinnakers wish but in a way that Spinnaker had never even imagined.

 

by David C Klem .. Copyright 1998

 

 I think the greatest miracle of all is when God himself became a little child. When Jesus came to earth put on the human form of a baby and stepped into our world. He did not come as a king or even as an adult He came as a poor baby born to a lowly peasant girl A man named Chesternon once wrote, " I can hardly even image that the hands that created the whole world became so small that they could not even reach the faces of the animals that attended his birth."

 

Read and memorize Phil 2:6-7

 

Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. Phil 2:6-7 (NIV)