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King Solomon Disobeys

~ hebidsthemcome ~ Leave a comment

Hello again! Today’s story is from 1 Kings 11.

choices

For all of King Solomon’s wisdom and good decision-making, he had a big problem. He LOVED the ladies. And he didn’t just love one lady…he got married a whole bunch of times, which God said you’re not supposed to do. The ladies he married also didn’t love the One True God, they worshipped other pretend gods.

After a while, one said, “Solomon, hunny…please build a statue of my god!” And he did. Then another said “What about me?! Please build a place for me to worship MY god.” And he did. He built places for them to worship their pretend gods and he even worshipped them too sometimes. His heart was not faithful to God like King David’s had been. And God was NOT happy. 

So the Lord said to him, “Since you have disobeyed my rules and not been faithful to Me, I am going to tear this kingdom away from you and give it to one of your servants. But because of how much your father David loved and served Me, I will not do this while you are still alive. I will take the kingdom away from your son.  And even then, I will not take away the entire kingdom; I will let him be king of one tribe.”

King Solomon’s choices were going to affect a lot of other people. When we make decisions, we need to think about how it might help or hurt others. Especially people in power…like kings, presidents, moms and dad, teachers, pastors…the things you do and say don’t just have good or bad consequences for you, they can help or hurt others. When we try to follow God’s laws and live a life of love (because of how much He loves us), then our choices will have good consequences for others. But Solomon wasn’t thinking about that. He was only thinking about what HE wanted…not what God wanted and not about what might happen to other people.

The funniest part is that King Solomon wrote a whole chapter of the Bible about this exact thing. Proverbs 29 talks all about how children’s actions affect their parents and how parents affect their children. How bosses and kings and neighbors all affect the people around them. But in the end, Solomon did not follow his own advice. He chose to live the way HE wanted, not the way God wanted…and the people of Israel would soon pay a big price for his poor choices.

“And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.”  Colossians 3:17 (ESV)

 

Thanks for joining us again, love to you all.

 

Israel Disobeys

~ hebidsthemcome ~ Leave a comment

Hi all! Welcome back! Today’s story is from Exodus 32/33. Last year’s lesson and craft can be found HERE.

So Moses was up on Mt Sinai with God getting all the rules for God’s people. Moses was gone 40 days (about a month) and the Israelites were just sitting down at the bottom of the mountain. In those 40 days they already started to think “Maybe God forgot about us? Maybe God isn’t real? Maybe God doesn’t care about us?”

So they came up with a plan. “We need a NEW god!” they said.

Aaron, Moses’ brother said, “Ok! We’ll make a new god! Everybody take off your rings, earrings, your bracelets…give us your gold cups, plates…whatever you have.” Then he called some guys who knew how to build and they made a cow shape. They heated up all the gold until it was very soft, poured it into the cow shape and let it harden. Then they took the cow shape off and they had made a golden cow statue.

The people then danced and sang and prayed to the cow.

Does God hear us? (Yes) Does God see us? (Yes) Does God love us? (YES!)

Can a cow statue hear us? (No) Can a cow statue see us? (No) Does a cow statue love us? NO!

God was NOT happy. He sent Moses back down the mountain to tell the people to STOP IT! Only GOD is the real God. He is the One we pray to and sing songs for and dance for. He is the One who loves us.

God was very frustrated, but Moses asked God to please forgive the people.

There were still bad consequences for the people worshipping the cow (some of them died and some more got very very sick). God just told us in the 10 commandments to put Him first and not worship any other thing…and His own people turned around and were doing just that.

You probably won’t see too many people where you live worshipping gold cows…but sometimes we DO put other things before God. Sometimes we worry more than we pray. Sometimes we want to watch tv or play games more than we want to talk to God. Sometimes we are more worried about getting toys than we are helping other people. We worry about what WE want, not what God wants.

We should always try to put GOD first. God’s own people forgot all about Him in a month. Let’s pray right now that God will always remind us of who He is and that we will always worship ONLY Him.

For our craft today, we cut out a golden cow shape.

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Then we added some gold glitter and our text: We worship ONLY God. Exodus 32.

Thanks for joining us again. Love to you all!