Told Off For Something You Didn't Do?

Genesis chapter 41- children’s talk on Joseph

• Told off for something you didn’t do?

• Practise ‘Good afternoon, Mrs Jacobi; good afternoon, everybody’

• Story- Josie

• Second youngest in Mrs Jacobi’s class and she was quite small

• Clever- top of her class… top table…most amounts of [SHOW] stars

• How do you think the other children felt towards her?

• Josie had three friends: Janie, Jimmy, Johnny

• A plot!

o Put great big blotches of [SHOW] ink all over her Maths book, using the same colour ink as her pen

o [SHOW] ‘I hate Mrs Jacobi’ in block capitals in the back of English neat book

o Steal Billy Brown’s [SHOW] Toffee Crisp he had saved till going home time, eat it and put the wrapper in Josie’s bag

• Near the end of the day, Josie went out to go to the [SHOW] toilet

• Janie, Jimmy, Johnny implemented their evil plan

• Josie came back, none the wiser…

• Everyone put up their chairs and said, [SHOW] “Good afternoon, Mrs Jacobi; good afternoon, everybody.”

• Suddenly, there was a wail from Billy- “Miss! Miss! Someone’s stolen my Toffee Crisp!”

• Everyone looked round and started whispering

• OWN UP

• No-one’s going!

• What do you think happened

• Janie put her hand up, “Saw Josie with a TC.” Jimmy said, “So did I…” Johnny said, “Really sorry about this Josie, but I have to admit I saw you with it too…”

• Mrs Jacobi marched over searched Josie’s bag- lo and behold- TC!

• Further inspection: what did she find? Maths book with ink blotches and the English book with ‘I hate Mrs Jacobi’.

• Josie was sent home with a note for her parents to see the Head the next day. How was she feeling?

• Josie was sent to her bedroom without any tea and that night she lay in bed awake, crying. She wondered why everyone had turned against her. But more than that she wondered why God had allowed this to happen to her, when she was innocent of the things she was accused of. She really started talking to God a lot from that point onwards…

• Josie was suspended from her school and had to go to a pupil referral unit along with some really mean kids who actually did steal and ruin their books and write nasty things.

• But God was with Josie the whole way, and even though her three so-called friends meant it for bad, God meant it for good.

• He used Josie to tell some of the really mean kids at the referral unit about the love of Jesus. And they had never known anybody love them before, let alone love them enough to be prepared to die for them. There was one really naughty girl in particular, Jade, who actually gave her life to Jesus a week after Josie had started going to the unit. Even though she was still naughty sometimes, she completely changed and started being kind to people. Instead of stealing things, she gave people presents. And she always told the truth, even if it meant owning up. This is because Jade came to know Jesus for herself and every day, the Lord Jesus helped Josie and Jade to live for Him, even in the hardest of circumstances.

• What about you? How are you going to react when things go wrong for you? Like Josie, or Abraham or Joseph who we’re looking at, at the moment? They trusted God to deliver them, and in the end, He always did, and the ending was better than the beginning!