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 :)

Is Jesus the Messiah?: Week Two

Our goals for this Sunday were to help the kids understand that we are all sons of Abraham and sons of God, and also to show them how God kept his promise to Abraham. I think it was all pretty effective

We began with a quick overview of who Abraham is. We went over the story of how he was too old to have a child, of how God promised him Isaac and many descendants.

We read Genesis 17:7 and Genesis 21:12, which both say that Abraham will have many descendants and that these descendants will come through Isaac. This is the point where we introduced the part of Abraham's story where Abraham was asked to sacrifice Isaac. We talked about how this was not just a test of Abraham's faith that God was good, but also a test of Abraham's faith in God's promises--after all, how would he have MANY descendants through a son that was sacrificed! This seems like a covenant that couldn't come true...

So then we read Hebrews 11:17-19, which says that God raised Isaac. We talked about how God stopped Abraham from sacrificing his son, and instead provided the ram for him. Then we read Matthew 1:2 where it shows us that Jesus came from the same physical line as Abraham. Since God is the father of all, it's true that Abraham has many descendants--all believers of Jesus are descendants of Abraham.

We read John 1:12 and Galatians 3:6-9 and talked about how we are all sons of Abraham and sons of God because we have faith in Christ. God kept his covenant and promise with Abraham, and the prophecies of the scriptures checked out! 2/200.

If you're keeping a checklist at home:

1) In David's line

2) In Abraham's line

Is Jesus the Messiah?: Week One

For the next semester, up until the kids get out of school in June, we're going to be focusing on Jesus as our Messiah. The idea and brainstorming for this section has been going on for almost a year, and it feels right for this point in our kids' walks with Christ and the life of our church. Each week we're going to take a different prophecy for the coming Messiah and put it up against Jesus. The kids are going to see as the entire puzzle plays out, and hopefully will be able to share with the parents what they learned.

First, a little background information. The Bible is split up into two parts--The Old and New Testament. What's the difference? All of the kids got that question right. There was an emphatic chant of JESUS from the crowd. I'm glad we know that much :) What the kids had trouble with was what do we do with the Old Testament? If we're followers of Jesus, why would we read a book that has no Jesus in it? One of the first-graders hit the nail on the head, "because it's how God and us get along. It shows our sins." True. At this point, I asked the kids what the word messiah means. We finally figured out that it basically meant Savior. We talked about how before Jesus, the Jewish children had to wait for the Messiah to come, and they were always on the lookout. But, God didn't leave them with nothing to go on--he put clues in the Old Testament to help describe who Jesus is. We decided to go back in time to when Jesus was born and to look at the clues and try and figure out if this Jesus character really is the Messiah. We also looked at the dates between the Old Testament and the New Testament. Thousands of thousands of years, in some cases!

The first thing the Jewish children would have looked for is a prophecy that happens multiple times in the scriptures. The scriptures say clearly that the Son of God will be a part of David's family. We read three or four verses and talked about what it meant to be a descendent of David and to be a part of his house. We talked about how this ruled out a lot of people when the Jewish children were looking. If they weren't part of David's family, they couldn't be the Messiah. So, now that we knew the Messiah was part of David's family, we had to figure out if Jesus was.

So, we went to the New Testament. We found more than a few confirmations that Jesus was part of David's family. The kids all thought that was really cool. Then I read to them from Matthew 1--we laughed about all of the names and silly phrasings, and we talked about how nobody ever reads the genealogy (woah! big word!), but the Jewish children did because it was so important that the Messiah came from David's line. The kids and I all decided we would continue to check Jesus against the Messiah. He hadn't steered us wrong yet.... Oh yeah, and we talked about how at that time, everything went back to the father. I asked the kids who Jesus' father was--Got a few Joseph's, a few God's. And his mother, Mary. We quickly realized that God was obviously related to David, Joseph was related to David, and so was Mary. So, there was no doubt that Jesus was related to King David. Awesomeness. 1/200.

We then played a little game to reinforce the whole point. We sent one kid out of the room. The rest of us picked a "golden person". When the other kid came back in, we had him try and guess who the "golden person" is. Everybody in the room gave one clue. We talked about how hard it would be to not have any clues whatsoever--the chances of being wrong would be way too big. Then we talked about how we're lucky God gave us clues. And that our clue this week was that the Messiah would come from David's line. And so far, Jesus stacks up.