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THE BASIC REVELATION IN THE HOLY SCRIPTURES
(For Younger Children)
Lesson Three: God's Plan (Part 1)
Objective:
To impress children that God can get what He wants most God's good
pleasure); a lot of sons that are like Him that show what He's like;
only by putting His own life, Himself, into some people* so that they
can be those sons.
*Use "people" rather than "men" because young
children will not automatically assume that women and children are also
included.
Materials:
- Lessons One and Two in this series,
- Illustrations from Lessons One and Two.
- Non-flowering non-fruit bearing house plant.
- Fruit-bearing potted plant with fruit on it, e.g., pepper plant,
miniature orange tree, etc.
- Dried lima beans
- Soil Styrofoam egg cartons
- Props for acting out story
Review:
- 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.
- 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..
- 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.
- 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?
- 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:
- 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.
- 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?
- 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?
- 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.
- 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.
- 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:
- 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!
- 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:
Lessons Three and Four: These lessons about God's plan to get the sons
He wants stress that to get those sons, God must put His own life into
some people. Would someone like to get God s life into him/her right
now, and be one of His sons? ask the child to open his/her heart up to
the Lord Jesus and pray as you guide.
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