Jesus Walks on Water

We are continuing our Bible studies about Jesus and His miracles. In this lesson, we are looking at Jesus walking on the water.

Last week we studied how Jesus fed 5,000 men plus the women and children with 5 loaves of bread and 2 fishes. After Jesus prayed and thanked God for the food, He had the Disciples feed the crowd.

After everyone had eaten, they gathered up all the leftover food and there were 12 baskets of food! (Discuss miracles: an instant act of God).

This lesson is found in Matthew 14: 22-33, Mark 6:45-51 and John 6:15-21. Immediately after they collected the extra food, Jesus told His Disciples get into the boat. He told them to go to the other side of the sea and sent the people away.

After Jesus sent the crowd away, He went up into the mountain by Himself to pray. When night came, Jesus was by Himself. Jesus had found out that John had been killed. Do you remember who John was? John and John were related & the one who baptized Jesus So Jesus is upset and wants some time to be alone and pray.

**Let the students have a marble. Have them put the marble in a bowl of water. What happens when you put the marble on the surface of the water? [it will sink] What happens when you go into the water? You either swim or you will sink. We are going to talk about two people that walked on water! (Original idea found here.) They LOVE this!

The boat with the Disciples on it was in the middle of the sea. They had rowed the boat about 3 ½ miles. There was a storm, and their boat was being tossed around by the rough waves!

It was about 3:00 during the night and Jesus saw them having trouble rowing the boat and so Jesus went to them. Jesus knew they were in trouble and scared and He went to comfort them. Jesus actually walked on the water to them. Verse 25 in Matthew tells us that He walked on the sea!  

When the Disciples saw Him walking on the sea, they were scared and thought Jesus was a ghost! They cried out in terror! But Jesus instantly told them to be happy and don’t be afraid! 

Peter said to Him: “Lord, if it is You, command me to come to You on the water.” Jesus told him to “Come.”  When Peter got out of the boat, he walked on the water to Jesus! 

The Bible doesn’t say swim, Peter walked ON the water! But when Peter saw that the wind was strong, he became afraid and started to sink. He had taken his eyes off of Jesus and let himself be distracted by the waves and the sea.  He yelled to Jesus “Lord, save me!”

Immediately Jesus stretched out His hand and caught him and said to Peter “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?”   

When they returned to the boat, the wind stopped. The people in the boat came to Jesus and were amazed at what He could do. They worshipped Him and said, “Truly You are the Son of God.”

 

I used this Galilee boat that I purchased for the Disciples lesson. But, there are so many lessons this can be used for!

I had the Jell-O 'water' and people cutouts ready for the kids to use and make this Jesus walking on the water this during the lesson. We added plastic fish that I purchase, but you can use Gummy fish. You can see more and print everything here.

One of the things to discuss with this lesson is that Jesus is always watching over us. I made this simple boat for the students to decorate to remind them of when Jesus is with them. They can draw their thoughts, or you can let them add stickers. You can print it here in color and black & white.

Click here to print.

We continue Miracles lapbook today. The students will leave them in class until we finish the miracles lessons, then they take them home. Click on the lapbook to see it. I decided to limit this lapbook to the miracles that Jesus did to prove Himself. We will study Malchus, Resurrection of Jesus and Jesus Returns to Heaven, etc., but I did not include these. If you'd like to add other miracles, you can see more Jesus lapbook printables here.

Bible Verse:  Matthew 14:33  

Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson.

Used by permission.

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Click here to download the pictures to color.

(These are the same as the visuals but are black & white.)