Audience
Junior High/ Middle School, High School, Young Adult
Topics
Convictions, Standing up for what’s right
Key Scripture
Daniel 3
The Point
You must have the courage to stand up for what is right
Materials
Youtube video, Pool Noodles
Components
Message
Preparation
Download Hunger Games trailer 2 from youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=dSyTkxfjCeU
(I use www.zamzar.com)
Ideas for the Sermon
Play your own version of The Hunger Games. To play this game you will need a pool noodle, large open area, at least six students and pieces of 10-inch cardboard or round plastic bases for each player. Select one student to be the candidate and give him the pool noodle. Put a cardboard or plastic base on the ground and ask him to stand on it. Ask the other students to form a circle around him, standing approximately 10 to 15 feet away from him. Give each of them a cardboard or plastic base and ask them to stand on it.
The candidate tries to touch (not hit) the other boys’ head or feet with the pool noodle. However, he and the other players cannot move from their base at any time during the game. The players can avoid the pool noodle by jumping or ducking at the appropriate time. Any boy touched by the pool noodle is eliminated from the game. Play continues until just one boy remains. That boy becomes the winner.
In this message we will be looking at lessons from the hottest thing going right now, The Hunger Games. Let’s start out by watching the trailer to this awesome movie.
Show trailer 2
Start out by giving this synopsis of the movie in your own words or if you used the first lesson in this series recap the last message.
Synopsis
In Suzanne Collins’ riveting tale of life in North America after its destruction, a powerful Capitol emerges as residents of its twelve outlying Districts individually struggle to survive under its bleak rule. Living under the constant reminder that the Capitol obliterated District 13 when the people incited a rebellion decades before, 16-year old Katniss Everdeen quietly carves out a path of meager survival for herself, her younger sister, Prim, and their widowed mother under the Capitol’s strict regime.
Each year, the Capitol assembles its Gamemakers to create an elaborate arena filled with deadly trigger points and calls upon one girl and one boy from each of the twelve Districts to play in its nationally televised Hunger Games. On the Day of Reaping when 24 children are selected to fight to the death, Katniss is whisked away from her daily quest for survival alongside her friend Gale, and thrust into the elaborate Capital as she is prepared for the Hunger Games.
In this world of instant gratification and superficial people, Katniss contends with her drunken, disengaged mentor, Haymitch, and wrestles with her feelings about her co-Tribute from District 12, Peeta Mellark. Growing up apart from Peeta in the same District, Katniss struggles to determine if Peeta is the boy who once showed her an act of kindness pivotal to her family’s survival, or if his actions are motivated to keep himself alive, as the Capital will allow only one Tribute to survive the Hunger Games’ treacherous arena.
In the days to come, Katniss must fend for her survival against the natural elements and the vicious Careers, who are Tributes who’ve trained for the Hunger Games their entire lives. Katniss meets a young Tribute whose likeness to Prim tears at her heartstrings and she continues to process what Peeta’s motives could be as the end draws near. Should she kill these two or be killed? If Katniss wins, her family will be handsomely taken care of and her District will receive the additional food it so desperately needs to survive.
Deep inside the Hunger Games, readers are treated to the witty, young mind of Katniss Everdeen, a survival-savvy girl who yearns to trust in a world that has shown her nothing of the sort.
End synopsis
This is a great movie and it ultimately has a great message. Sometimes in your life you are going to get dealt a bad hand. Sometimes you will have hardships. But the true test of who you are comes when you have to stand up for what is right… no matter the cost.
Katniss had this option. She had the option to kill Peeta and win the Hunger Games and bring about prosperity for her and for her family. But deep down she knew, like a lot of people knew, that the Hunger Games just was not right. She knew that the people in charge wanted a winner and a battle to the very death. But what would they do if they were both dead? So just like Romeo and Juliet so many years before they were going to end the movie by both eating the poisonous berries. She was going to stand up for what’s right, even though she knew that she would lose her life doing it.
Illustration:
Story of Telemachus
Chuck Colson tells the story of Telemachus, a 4th-century Christian monk. This man lived in a remote village, tending his garden and spending much of his time in prayer. One day he thought he heard the voice of God telling him to go to Rome, so he obeyed, heading out on foot. Weary weeks later, he arrived in the city at the time of a great festival. The little monk followed the crowd surging down the streets into the Colosseum. He saw the gladiators stand before the emperor and say, “We who are about to die salute you.” Then he realized these men were going to fight to the death for the entertainment of the crowd Telemachus cried out, “In the name of Christ, stop!”
As the games began, he pushed his way through the crowd, climbed his way over the wall, and dropped to the floor of the arena. When the crowd saw this tiny figure rushing to the gladiators and saying, “In the name of Christ, stop!” they thought it was part of the show and began laughing.
When they realized it wasn’t, the laughter turned to anger. As Telemachus was pleading with the gladiators to stop, one of them plunged a sword into his body. He fell to the sand. As he was dying, his last words were, “In the name of Christ, stop!”
Then a strange thing happened. The gladiators stood looking at the tiny figure lying there. A hush fell over the Colosseum. Way up in the upper rows, a man stood and made his way to the exit. Others began to follow. In dead silence, everyone left the Colosseum.
The year was 391AD, and that was the last battle to the death between gladiators in the Roman Colosseum. Never again in the great stadium did men kill each other for the entertainment of the crowd, all prompted by one tiny voice that could hardly be heard above the roar, one voice that spoke the truth in God’s name.
That is what Katniss did. She stood up for what was right in the face of almost certain death. And that is what the three men in our text did as well. Let’s all read Daniel 3 together.
Key Verses: 16 Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego replied to him, “King Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. 17 If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to deliver us from it, and he will deliver us from Your Majesty’s hand. 18 But even if he does not, we want you to know, Your Majesty, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.”
1. The Similar Crisis
Shadrach. Meshach, and Abednego had a very similar crisis on their hands as did Katniss and Peeta. They had to do what they knew was not right or die.
Nebuchadnezzar set up an idol and wanted those three to worship it, but they knew they should worship no other god besides the One True God.
2. The Similar Cost
For Katniss it was a similar cost. For Peeta it was death either way. But Katniss had the ability to kill Peeta and not only would everyone understand but they would have thrown her a parade and lavished her with gifts.
Everyone would have understood similarly if the three had just bowed down. After all, everyone was doing it. This would have been no big deal, everyone would have gotten on with their lives… except those three wouldn’t have been able to live with themselves.
3. The Similar Choice
For Katniss the choice was to kill or not to kill, for the three it was to bow or burn.
They had a lot of things they could have said that would have been logical excuses as to why they should bow down.
1. We will fall down but not actually worship the idol.
2. We will not become idol worshippers, we will just worship it this one time, and then ask God to forgive us.
3. The king has absolute power, we must obey him. God will understand.
4. The king appointed us – we owe this to him.
5. This is a foreign land, so God will excuse us for following the customs of this land.
6. Our ancestors set up idols in God’s temple! This isn’t half as bad.
7. We’re not hurting anyone.
8. If we get ourselves killed and some pagans take our high position, they won’t help our people.
But ultimately all of those excuses were overridden by Exodus 20:3 “You must not have any other god but me.”
4. The Not-So-Similar Companion
Here is where the stories take two different turns. Katniss and Peeta had their lives spared exactly like the three did. However, the three had a visitor in the fiery furnace that makes these two stories completely different.
Who was the fourth person in the furnace? We don’t really know. Some think it was an angel. Some think it was a Christophony. A Christophony is pre-incarnate visit from Jesus Christ. How awesome would that be?
How awesome would it be to have been hanging out in a fiery furnace with Jesus? They must have been dancing, singing, praising God. What an awesome feeling that must have been.
What is it that you need to stand up for? Is there someone in your school that is getting picked on a lot? Are your friends doing things that you know that they shouldn’t be doing? Are you committing a sin in your life that you know is not right?
Wherever you are right now, you need to have the courage to stand up against injustice and fight for what is right. It might be difficult. It might stir up trouble for you. But you should know that whatever you go through God will be walking right by your side in the fiery furnace.
Thought of the Night: Stand up and fight for what is right.
* This sermon is from www.youth-sermons.com and was written by James Blewett.
To have James speak at your next event, email him at youthsermonsdotcom@gmail.com *
