Ahab

Elijah and the big fire

~ hebidsthemcome ~ Leave a comment

Hello all! Welcome back! Today’s story is 1 Kings 18. Last year’s story and activity can be found HERE.

Elijah was a prophet (someone who talks to God and then tells the people what God wants them to know.) Ahab was the big BAD, MEAN King. Ahab and his wife, Jezebel, made really bad choices and they got the people in Israel to make bad choices too! They all started worshipping a pretend god instead of the REAL God. Ahab even killed a lot of the other prophets and the consequence for not worshipping God had been no rain for years! The plants, animals and even people were dying because there was no water.

So Elijah said “Let’s have a contest. We will each give a sacrifice to our God, and we’ll set it up on some rocks and sticks ready for a fire. But WE won’t make a fire. We will pray and ask each of our gods to make a fire FOR us. The God that gives a real fire, is the real God. Ok?”

The people agreed. The pretend god’s people went first. They set up an altar (place to sacrifice an animal) with rocks and sticks and then they called out to their pretend god for fire from morning until lunch time. “Please send fire! Pleeeeeease? Pretty please??”

“What’s the matter?” Elijah asked. “Is your god busy? Is he asleep? Maybe he went on vacation? Just yell louder and THEN maybe he will answer you.” So the people did. They yelled louder and louder until dinner time! But no one answered. (Because a pretend god can NOT answer!)

Then Elijah said, “Ok. My turn.” He got twelve big rocks (one for each of the big families of Israel) and some wood and then had the people pour water on it all! Do you know what water does to fire? It puts it out! There couldn’t be a fire where there was so much water……right? Well THREE times they poured water on everything so it was all soaking wet!

Then Elijah prayed to God, “God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel, let it be known today that YOU are God in Israel and that I am your servant and have done all these things like YOU told me to. Answer me, Lord, answer me, so these people will know that you, Lord, are God, and so that you will turn their hearts back to you again.”

Then WHOOOOOOOSH!  A big, HUMUNGOUS fire came and burnt up the sacrifice, the woods, the rocks, the water, EVERYTHING! All the people were SOOOOO surprised! They fell down and said “WOW! It IS the real God!” They were sorry they had disobeyed God and worshipped other pretend gods. Now they remembered who the REAL God was and is.

And just like that….Elijah told one of his helpers to go look at the sea…7 times the helper went back and forth from the sea….and then he saw it….RAIN CLOUDS! Now that the people had come back to God, He sent rain for them.

Let us NEVER forget who the REAL God is and let’s only love and worship HIM forever!

For our craft today, we drew Elijah, glued on some toothpicks and then took pipettes and some paint.  (We had to water the paint down just a touch–a tablespoon or so–so it would suck up the pipette easier). Then we sucked the paint into the pipettes and squirted it back onto the paper to look like fire.

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Thanks for joining us again, love to you all!

Elijah and the widow

~ hebidsthemcome ~ Leave a comment

Hello all! Today’s story is from 1 Kings 17.

If you remember, Israel was now divided into two parts-the family of Judah and the rest of Israel…they each had a king. Israel’s new king was named Ahab. And he was a STINKER! The Bible says he was worse than every king before him! He even worshipped pretend gods.

Now there was a prophet named Elijah…a prophet is someone who talks to God and then tells the people what God wants them to know. Elijah told the king that because he was making such bad choices, that there would be consequences. The consequence would be that there would be no rain for several years. (If there’s no rain, then no plants can grow and if no plants can grow, then the animals have nothing to eat and nothing to drink and they die, and if there is no water, plants or animals, then the people have nothing to eat or drink and every person could die!) This is called a drought.

Then God told Elijah to go to a river and he drank water from the river and the birds brought him food. But just like God had said…it stopped raining and the river dried up. Elijah was getting very thirsty and very hungry.

So God told Elijah to go to a town and find a widow (that means a lady whose husband died.) Elijah found her and asked her for some water and some bread.

But she answered, “I promise to God, I don’t have any bread—I only have a handful of flour in a jar and a little olive oil in a jug. I am gathering a few sticks to take home to build a fire and make a meal for myself and my son, that we may eat it—and die.” (After they used up this last bit of food she had, they would have no more food and would probably starve.)

But Elijah told her, “Don’t be afraid. Go home and do as you have said. But first make a small loaf of bread for me from what you have and bring it to me, and then make something for yourself and your son. This is what God says: ‘The jar of flour will not be used up and the jug of oil will not run dry until the day the Lord sends rain on the land.’”

The woman TRUSTED God and she went home and made some bread for Elijah and the jug never ran out of oil and the jar never ran out of flour until it rained again years later…just like God said!

This is a miracle…something that shouldn’t be able to happen, but God can make it happen–something ONLY God can do.

Because the woman trusted God and OBEYED Him, He took care of her and her son and always made sure they had enough.

God promises us in lots of places in the Bible that He will take care of us too! (Matt 6:31-32, 7:11, Phil 4:19, Luke 12:24, Job 38:41, Genesis 9:3, Psalm 34:10, 36:6, 81:10, 84:11-12, 146:7, 107:9)

 

For today’s craft we drew the jug of oil and a container for flour. Then we tried something new: we painted on the jug with actual oil and glued and sprinkled on actual flour. (Disclaimer: these don’t really show up very well when they dry..but they do smell good. So it’s more for the experience than the end result.) You could also make some simple bread using flour and oil like THIS RECIPE.

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Thanks for joining us again! Love to you all!

Elijah Reminds the People to Follow God

~ hebidsthemcome ~ Leave a comment

Hi all!

Today’s story is from 1 Kings 17-18.

Recap: After Solomon, Rehoboam was made king over Israel, but only the people from one tribe (family), the tribe of Judah stayed loyal to Rehoboam. The rest of Israel followed Jeroboam. But nobody really obeyed God. They worshipped pretend gods and statues called idols, especially one they called Baal. There were more kings after Rehoboam and Jeroboam, but pretty much all of them were terrible and disobeyed God.

A few kings later, one of the kings of Israel was named Ahab. Ahab was especially bad. He and Queen Jezebel did terrible things. They even killed people who worshipped the real God. God was VERY unhappy that the people were disobeying and worshipping other pretend gods. Because the people had been disobeyed God so much, he made it not rain for 3 YEARS. Do you know what happens to food if it doesn’t rain? The food can’t grow. Food needs dirt and sunshine and water to grow. Without water, the people would have no food. But that was the bad consequence for their choice to disobey God.

But God had a prophet named Elijah. A prophet is someone who tells people what God wants them to know. God speaks to the prophet and the prophet talks to the people. Sometimes it’s good news, sometimes it’s bad news, sometimes it’s about something that will happen later.

Elijah was a prophet. The king had been chasing Elijah to kill him (since he was someone who worshipped the real God.) Elijah came to Ahab the king and said, “Bring the people of Israel and meet me at mount carmel.” When the people came, Elijah said, “God says ‘STOP IT!’ If you believe God is real, follow Him…if these pretend gods are real, follow them!”

The people didn’t know what to say.

So Elijah said, “Let’s have a contest. We will each get a pile of wood and put a dead animal on it as a present to our gods. We won’t set it on fire though. I will pray to my God and you will pray to Baal and your other gods and we’ll see who answers and gives us fire.”

The people liked this idea. So they got two piles of wood and they sacrificed (killed) two bulls and they put them on the  wood. (This was how they used to make offerings or gifts to God to show Him they love Him or to ask Him to forgive them if they did something wrong…when Jesus died on the cross for us, He became the biggest offering ever and we don’t have to do that anymore because Jesus did that once and for all for us.)

Elijah told the people to call to their pretend gods. They said, “Baal! Baal! Baaaaaaaaaaaal! Answer us! Please?! Baaaaaaaaal!” They did this ALL. MORNING. Elijah said, “Maybe he’s just sleeping? Yell louder!”

Of course it didn’t work! They just had pretend gods, statues and made up things….statues can’t make fire. Pretend gods can’t really hear us.

Then it was Elijah’s turn.  He added 12 big rocks to his pile (one for each tribe/family in Israel) and then he told them to put water all over everything. Do you know what water does to fire? (My kids said it “melts it”). Water puts OUT fire. But to prove that God can do ANYTHING, even make fire on water, Elijah told them 3 times to put water on everything. Then he prayed to God. “Let everybody here know that YOU are God of Israel. Answer me so these people will KNOW that YOU are God and so they will come back and worship you.”

Do you know what happened next? FIRE! Big FIRE came and burned up EVERYTHING, even the rocks and all the water! NOTHING is too hard for God.

The people were surprised and they suddenly knew all the bad choices they had been making. They felt so scared and so sorry. Then, the clouds started to come, and finally after 3 years of no rain, it started to rain again. Because the people realized who the REAL God is and realized what terrible things they had done and were sorry, God let it rain again. He ended their bad consequence.

For our activity today, we went outside and gathered a pile of sticks. We pretended the people were calling to Baal and the idols…no fire. Then we poured “water” (actually isopropyl alcohol, but looks like water) onto the pile three times. Then we pretended to be Elijah praying to the real God (and with a lighter), lit the pile on fire.

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Thanks for joining us today, Love to you all!