Is Jesus the Messiah?: Week Three

Whew! I've known this week was coming up for a few weeks now, and I've been thinking and praying about how best to approach the prophecy for today. I think it's important the kids know the prophecy of Mary's virgin birth, but how to explain it to kids ages 5-12 in a way that won't leave parents scratching their heads is tough! But, I think we did it justice.

We began with a discussion of purity. We talked about how something that's pure means that nothing else has been mixed together with it. We used play-doh as an example. When you have one color (say, pink) and it hasn't been played yet, it's purely pink. But when you introduce blue to the mix, the pink and blue mix together and make purple and that pink play-doh is no longer purely pink. We talked about how that's what sin is like--it mixes with us and then we aren't pure anymore.

We told the kids that there are different types of purity. Purity of thought, purity of speech, and purity of action. Then we read our scripture. We read Isaiah 7:14, which says, in essence, that the Messiah would be born of a virgin and called Immanuel. This was where things got tricky! We explained to the kids that virgin is a subcategory of purity, but that it's a special kind of purity because only unmarried people can be virgins. We also told the kids that it was completely impossible to be both a virgin and a parent. We laughed about how that seemed pretty impossible then, to mix the two!

We then read Matthew 1:18-21 which says that Jesus was born of a virgin, and that he was named Jesus. We told the kids that even though it was impossible for a virgin to be a parent, God worked a miracle by putting Jesus in Mary and making her a parent, even while she was still a virgin. The kids were really excited about how God could work miracles, and I felt like they got the general concept of the Wow! factor without any disruptions of innocence. :)

We also talked about how Immanuel means "God with us" and Jesus means "God Save Us". We went to John 1:1 and talked about how when Jesus was on this earth he was GOD WITH US, and then when he died on the cross he was the God that saved us. So he is both Immanuel and Jesus. 4/200 :)