Is Jesus the Messiah?: Week Eight

This week, our prophecy studies lead us to a part of Jesus' character that the kids might not have known before. We looked in Psalm 69:9 where it says that the Messiah would have great zeal for his father's house. We talked about what zeal means, and here are some of the words the kids came up with as synonyms.

• love
• enthusiasm
• passion
• happy
• excited
• longing

The Messiah had all of these things for God's house. This is our clue! Then we turned to Luke and read the story of when Jesus was a young boy. His family went on a trip to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover. They were there for awhile, and then when the festival was over, they headed back to Bethlehem. Jesus stayed behind (whoops!) and Mary and Joseph assumed he was just hitching a ride with someone else. So they got home, and they realized they'd left him, so they turned back around and a few days later, they finally found him.

At this point, we asked the kids if they'd ever been lost before, and if so, where they thought their parents looked first thing. They all said "inside the house", so we made the situation a little bit different. You get lost in Target. Where's the first place your parents look? One of the kids got it spot on when he raised his hand and said "THE TOY SECTION!" We asked him why, and he told us it was because that's where his favorite part of the store was, so he would be there most likely!

We shifted back to the Bible and talked about how Jesus was found in the temple, talking with Rabbis and other people, and they were amazed by him. When Mary came up to him and asked him where he'd been, Jesus was like, "Lady, why didn't you realize I'd be in my favorite place EVER!?" This makes total sense. Duh, of course Jesus would be in the temple!

The kids and I all decided that this story was definitely an example of Jesus' zeal for his father's house. He'd rather be there than anywhere else-even though his pets, video games, and all of his toys were back home. Jesus chose the temple over everything else, constantly. If that doesn't show love, enthusiasm, passion, longing, excitement and happiness for the temple, what does? Jesus was zealous about the temple, just like the Old Testament said he would be.

We could have looked at another story where Jesus overturned tables in the church as an adult, but we didn't get a chance. If you want to read it with your children on your own and talk about how it proves Jesus was zealous, it can be found at John 2:12-25 (or in any of the other Gospels, but John is my favorite if we're talking about zealousness!)

Is Jesus the Messiah?: Week Seven

This week we talked about the two prophecies in Isaiah 53:2 and Zechariah 9:9. One of these is a kind of difficult prophecy to digest, and the other is just kind of silly and random, so we had fun with it. We brought the kids downstairs, opened up the bible, and while kids were finding the lessons, we brought up a few things...

The kids and I discussed how God is all powerful and really mighty, and how it makes sense to us that if God could come down as anybody in the world, he would choose to be a King or someone really powerful and awesome. These people were expecting somebody to come in and kick some butt and have a lot of money, but they were in for quite a shock.

We read Isaiah 53:2. We talked about what a "tender shoot" is, and how the prophecy meant two things: 1) Jesus was not attractive (wouldn't you want to be attractive if you could choose how you looked? strange, God) and 2) Jesus was gonna not have a home. Hardly the kind of life you would think the God of the universe would choose for himself. Then we read Zechariah 9:9, where it says the Messiah's gonna come riding on a donkey. We talked about clunker cars... How at one point, those cars were really awesome and like "THE THING" to drive in. Donkeys are the same way. At some point, they were the advanced kind of ride... But then time passed, and people started realizing that donkeys poop everywhere and don't quite do what you want them to do, and they started being kind of like a clunker car... The poor people's ride. With that in mind, we focused our attention on this Jesus guy that people are saying might be the Messiah.

We read Luke 9:58 and Matthew 4:12-16, where we found out Jesus was a homeless dude who had to borrow a donkey. The kids were all shocked to find out they're following a homeless guy. These people thought Jesus was a big deal, and they were so surprised to find out that he was just a homeless guy with no donkey. We talked about WHY God would choose to come down as a homeless man. And one of the things we realized is that we shouldn't treat people any different whether they are homeless or not. They're all the same.

We listened to the song "One of Us" by Joan Osborne and were all kind of sobered by how we might have reacted to Jesus, had he come the same way now. We talked about how to show love to everybody, prayed, and went upstairs for worship.

Is Jesus the Messiah?: Week Six

We started off last week by putting on our yarmulkes and reading Isaiah 40:3 and Malachi 3:1. These two verses pointed at the prophet right before Jesus that would come to share the good news. We focused on the words 'desert' and 'prepare'. We talked about how God had been silent for 400 years (aka, no prophets) right before John the Baptist showed up. John's whole purpose was to prepare everyone for Jesus.

John was this crazy guy who probably had long hair and ate locusts and wild honey and he was just a little bit "different" than everybody else. We talked about how this showed John's purpose was fulfilled ( re Luke 1:17). We also read Matthew 3:1-6 and talked about how John looked a bit like a freak, but God still used him. And what's more, his appearance played a huge part. People tend to focus on others who look "different", and John certainly did!

The big kids learned about the story of John's birth (Elizabeth getting pregnant, Zechariah's mouth being shut, etc, etc. Then we talked about John's death, and how his death might have helped to prepare the way for Jesus. We discussed that perhaps if John hadn't have died, Jesus wouldn't have had the followers he needed. Even John's death was preparation for Christ! Then we talked about the importance of being obedient to God--> God knows what he's doing, and he gave us all a purpose and we need to fulfill it.

And of course, we talked about baptism.

Is Jesus the Messiah?: Week Five

This week was a really interesting lesson, and I heard a lot of the kids really excited about it! Some even said it was their favorite ever! We looked at the prophecies in Jeremiah 31:15 and Hosea 11:1 as a big group--they say that there will be weeping around the time of Jesus' birth, and that out of Egypt He'll come.

One of my favorite parts of this lesson was when we read, "and out of Egypt I will call my son". About five heads shot up, and I was so proud of them for the way they were critically examining the bible. I asked them what was wrong, and they told me that we already read Jesus came out of Bethlehem! What a conundrum, but we all had faith that God would figure this out for us.

We split the kids up into groups... The first group (3-5) went with me. We talked about how Abraham was the father of nations. Then we went on a little genealogy trip. Abraham to Isaac, Isaac to Jacob. We told the story of Jacob's inheritance (You know, the one where he tricked his blind father into giving him a ton of money by skinning a goat and pretending to be his other brother Esau?) and how he ran away. While he was running, he came across a field and fell madly in love with this girl, Rachel (is this a Disney movie, or what?). He asked her father, Laban to let him marry her, and he said "sure buddy, but you gotta work for 7 years!" So Jacob did but it felt like nothing because he was so enamored with this girl. Then he gets married and he wakes up the next morning and WHOOPS, it's the uglier sister, Leah. Crap. So, he goes back to Laban and asks him what his deal is, and Laban says "okay, work another 7!" and so Jacob does and he finally gets Rachel.

Meanwhile, Leah and Jacob have all these kids... but he can't get any goin' with Rachel, so he's really upset. God's closed Rachel's womb because of favoritism, and Rachel's upset about it. Then miracle baby Joseph comes along (remember, the favorite of the pack? I wonder why that could be...), and Rachel's like "hey! I want another one!" so miracle baby Benjamin comes along, and in the middle of delivery (cue the lights for drama), Rachel starts weeping frantically because she's about to die giving birth to this baby, and she starts weeping for her children. And so the Jews have called her the mother of all Jews (kind of like how some Christians refer to Mary).

So, that's what the first group learned....

Then the second group (K-2) went on a mission. They read Matthew 2:1-12, which basically says that the wise men met with Herod (bad guy!) before coming to see Jesus, and Herod told them to come back and tell him if the baby is really the King of the Jews 'cause he wanted to "worship" him (and by worship, we mean kill). So the wise men went, saw Jesus was awesome. God came down and said, "Listen, buddies, don't go back to Herod, 'cause he's gonna kill the baby", so the wise men were wise and went a different way back to their homelands. Eventually Herod started to realize they weren't coming back, so he headed to Bethlehem to kill all the boys under 2. So, we kids went on a mission with our baby Jesus (our shoes), and we heard God telling us to flee to Egypt, so we did. We ran away from Herod, and WHEW! we were safe.

Everybody came back together and we had the big kids tell the young kids about Rachel, and the young kids told the big kids about Egypt. We looked at the old testament verses again, and we saw that it totally came true! Rachel was weeping for babies being slaughtered, AND Jesus did come out of Egypt because he had to flee there. GO GOD!

Is Jesus the Messiah?: Week Four

This week we did something a little different and split the kids up into age groups. We have a new set up downstairs that's really awesome and allows us to be more creative and more savvy in how we teach the kids. We started down in the "basement" together as a group and reviewed the last few prophecies (David, Abraham, a virgin, Immanuel) and looked at the puzzle pieces to see how the puzzle looked. We had the kids color Yarmulkes (since we're Jewish children!) and then we prayed, read the Old Testament scriptures, and split into separate rooms.

K-2 went with Ms. Amanda into the library and focused on the prophecy that the Messiah would come from Bethlehem. They read Micah 5:2 and talked about how the verse tells us that the Messiah will come from a small town called Bethlehem, that it's a Jewish town, and that there will only be one Messiah who will rule from beginning to end. Then the kids read Luke 2:4-6, and Matthew 2:1-6 and they went on a journey.

In the passage, we learn that Joseph wasn't even supposed to be in Bethlehem. Joseph and Mary actually lived in a town called Nazareth, but they had to go to Bethlehem for a census since Joseph was part of David's line, and David was from Bethlehem (throw back to first prophecy!) So the kids all pretended to be Mary and Joseph going on a journey. Now, Nazareth was only about 80 miles away from Bethlehem but we've got to shift a minute... Remember the story of the Good Samaritan? The Samaritans and the Galileans were in a huge fight. Nazareth is located in Samaria, Bethlehem is in Judea, and in the middle was Galilee. Going a direct route to Bethlehem would have been REALLY dangerous. We had the kids sneak around the warring towns--it would have been too dangerous for Mary to go through the straight path! So, Joseph and Mary had to travel around the towns--almost double that amount!--to get to Bethlehem. This could have taken at least a week! God really went out of his way to make this prophecy come true.

Two things we found were special about Bethlehem:

• David is from Bethlehem - That's why Joseph and Mary had to go back there. They were part of David's line.
• Bethlehem literally means "House of Bread"- Many times in scripture, Jesus refers to himself as "the bread of life".

3-5 stayed with Ms. Karis in the big room and talked about the other part of the prophecy, found in Psalm 72:10. We talked about what it meant to bring gifts to someone. Usually gifts are given to someone you think highly of, or love. We talked about the difference between someone walking from Mexico to bring you gifts vs. sending it in the mail and what message it sends to you... that you're important and loved.

We then read Matthew 2:9-12. We talked about how the gifts that were brought to Jesus were both prophetic and common for a King. They were very expensive gifts and very common for royalty. The first things they show us is that the Magi recognized the importance of Jesus. The meanings of the gifts also point to the Messiah.

• Gold - the most precious, given only to royalty. Tells us that Jesus is a KING (per Daniel 2:38)
• Myrrh - heals wounds. We likened this to the potion Edmund got from Lucy in Chronicles of Narnia. It shows us that Jesus is a reconciler and a healer (per John 19:39)
• Frankincense - represents life and purity. Tells us that Jesus is sinless and a lifegiver (per Leviticus 5:11).

We also talked about how the Magi were not Jewish (they were astrologers!) so they knew nothing about this Jesus guy or the Messiah. They just saw a star and followed it.

Then all the children came back into the big room and taught each other about the prophecy they learned. We added a puzzle piece to the mix, prayed, and sent the kids upstairs. 6/200