THE BASIC REVELATION IN THE HOLY SCRIPTURES

(For Younger Children)

Lesson Three: God's Plan (Part 1)

Objective:

Materials:

1. Lessons One and Two in this series,
2. Illustrations from Lessons One and Two.
3. Non-flowering non-fruit bearing house plant.
4. Fruit-bearing potted plant with fruit on it, e.g., pepper plant, miniature orange tree, etc.
5. Dried lima beans
6. Soil Styrofoam egg cartons
7. Props for acting out story

Review:

1. ASK children to tell what they remember from the last lesson; keep soliciting feedback from them until someone comes up with the objective of that lesson (refer to copy of Lesson Two). Then re-state it and repeat it; have them also do so.
2. ASK how God is going to get this thing that He wants so much - anyone have any ideas? Take any and all answers; if one comes close, lead that one on; guide the flow of ideas and responses with leading questions..
3. SHOW illustration from Lesson One's story about the king who wanted sons. How did the king get his sons to look like him? What did he have to do to them to get them to look like him? Eventually someone will answer, "They were just born that way." Right.
4. SHOW illustrations from Lesson Two's story about "Quicksilver." Ask how the horse keeper made "Quicksilver's" sons be as little as him --they were born that way-- the horse keeper didn't have the veterinarian cut their lefts off or something, did he?
5. SHOW illustration from Lesson One's story about the blue roses. How did the gardener with the blue roses get the new roses to be blue and look like the first blue rose? Did he paint each new bud blue? or paint each blossom blue when it had opened up enough to let a paintbrush inside? No, they just grew that way, because the bush they were on was really a grown-up branch off the first blue rose bush.

Implementation:

1. SHOW non-fruit-bearing house plant. Point out that it has lots of leaves but no fruit. Request one child to start telling the plant, "Grow peppers! Grow peppers! Grow peppers!" Have that child continue quite a while. Did anything happen yet? Let's try someone else--and perhaps even someone else again. Why isn't anything happening? Will anything happen maybe a week from now? Why not? That plant just isn't the kind that grows peppers.
2. SHOW potted pepper plant. Why does this one have peppers when the other one didn't? Did the owner tell it to grow peppers a lot of times one day and now it has obeyed and grown the peppers? No, it is just the kind of plant that grows peppers. Does it grow apples? roses'? Will it ever? It grows peppers and only peppers because it is a pepper plant If you go home and tell the ivy plant at your house to grow peppers, tell it a lot of times, will it grow peppers? Why not? To grow peppers, a plant has to be a pepper plant, doesn't it?
3. TELL/ACT OUT a story about a boy/girl (make a boy or a girl to suit your audience's composition and give an appropriate name) who wants more than anything to be like the older boy/girl that lives four houses down the block. The older child is on the school track team and runs very fast indeed, always wins all the races up and down the block, and has done so for as long as the younger child can remember. Moreover, he/she can broad-jump much farther, either running or flat-footed, than anyone else who has ever come along their block. To try to be like this older child, the younger child practices and practices jumping, runs around the whole block every morning, gets his/her room to buy special running shoes, and even stretches his/her legs every night before going to bed by hooking his/her toes under the edge of the bed and then pulling the body out straight as hard and far as possible and holding it that way for a bit. This goes on for a good long, while. But after all that time, the younger child still can't beat even any of the others his/her own age. The thing is, the older child is from a family of tall thin long-legged people and is built like that. while the younger child is from a short, stout family. Can he/she ever really be like the older child? Why not? He/she is from the wrong family. You have to have long legs to be like the older child, and to have long legs, you have to born with them. You have to be from a family that has long legs somewhere back there so they can be passed on to you. What if the younger child was the little brother/sister of the older child? Then what would be the possibility of being like him/her?
4. EXPLAIN that the problem here is what you are born to be like, what's inside you that's going to turn out one way or the other. This is why only the pepper plant grows peppers--it's got something inside it that makes it grow peppers. This is why the older child in the story has long legs there is something inside him/her that make his/her legs now long, that makes him/her be like the rest of the family.
5. APPLY this concept to the question asked at the start of this lesson: How is God going to get sons like Himself? Can some people just be like Him if they decide to be? No, there has to be that something inside that makes you be like whatever you whatever you're like. [Here you can introduce the terminology "God's life" and the concept of living things have "a life" that causes them to grow peppers, bark, climb trees, or whatever ONLY IF the children are old enough to grasp this concept itself rather than merely parroting terminology.] Well, God can have sons like Himself only if there's something inside some people that makes them turn out to be like Him. And do you know what that something is? God Himself! Isn't that amazing? So here's what He has planned to do to get His sons that are like Him: He has planned to put Himself into some people, so they'll turn out to be like Him! That is the big plan that God made long, long ago, and has always been working on.
6. QUIZ the children: Now what is it that God wants most of all? And what is His plan to get that? Go from child to child, asking each one in turn.

Reinforcement Activities:

1. SING to the tune of "Joy to the World"
   O praise the Lord, God had a plan
   To get
   some sons
   like Him.
   For them to be sons just like Him,
   He had to put Himself in them.
   What He wants most is sons,
   A lot of sons like Him,
   So Hallelujah God made a plan!

2. PLANT lima beans in soil in egg-carton sections or other suitable containers. Demonstrate how to water but not "drown" the these bean/seed, Will beans grow peppers? Why not? Will they grow beans? Why? Consider planning for each child to take home more than one--perhaps one third of an egg carton (with four depressions to plant in).

Gospel Suggestion: