obadiah

Obadiah

~ hebidsthemcome ~ Leave a comment

Hello again! Today we’ll be discussing the book of Obadiah.

obadiah

Obadiah was a prophet–that’s someone who talks to God and then tells the people what God wants them to know. Sometimes it’s good news, sometimes…it’s not.

The people of Israel (God’s people He chose to set apart to show as an example of His love) were made up of twelve tribes, or kind of like big families. Most of them had left and followed a different king and Israel split into two parts. Israel fought many wars and the people of most of the tribes of Israel were overtaken and had to move far away. The last family left was the family of Judah.

But even they eventually were captured by the Babylonians. The capital city of Jerusalem (where the temple was and where the king lived) were taken over too. The people who lived nearby were from a place called Edom. The people of Edom came and took all the people of Judah’s stuff–when the city got taken over they took their cows, their houses, their jewelry, their other animals, their toys and beds. The people of Judah ran away but some of the people from Edom would capture them and give them to the king of Babylon so he could put them in jail or even kill them.

This did NOT make God happy.

So Obadiah told the people God’s words. His message was short, but it has two parts. In the first part, he yells at the people of Edom for being mean to the people of Israel. He tells them they should NOT have taken the peoples’ things, they should not break and destroy their towns and that no matter how far they try to hide, God will find them and punish them for the things they did.

The second part of his message was to tell the people of Israel that even though things seemed terrible, that God still had a plan for them. God would bring them (at least some of them) back to Israel. God would restore their things and the land He promised to them. He would give that land back to them.

God is faithful. That means when He says something, He means it and He sticks by it. God promised that land to His people and He was going to make sure it stayed with them. We know if we make bad choices, that God sees those and wants us to make it right. And then sometimes we might face scary or hard times, but we can remember the promises of God: that He loves us, He has good plans for us, and He is in control.

 

Thanks for joining us again. Love to you all!

The Prophets

~ hebidsthemcome ~ Leave a comment

Hi all.

Bit of a different lesson today. Sometimes there are stories that have a clear beginning, middle and and even a nice lesson for kids to take away. Sometimes, in order to give them a picture of the whole story and what all the Bible entails, we have to do one of these what i call “A to B” lessons. No real story or nicely packaged lesson, but it gets us from where we were in the Bible to where we’re going.

So, today we’ll be talking about some of the prophets.

There is a big part of the Bible that has books written by the prophets. Remember, a prophet is someone who talks to God and then the tells the people what God said. Sometimes it’s good news, sometimes it’s bad news. Sometimes it’s directions for the people and sometimes it’s about something that will happen later.

Most of the books of prophecy in the Bible were written around the time we’ve been studying…when Israel was taken captive (and Judah was about to be). Which means a lot of these guys lived at the same time and God was telling them all the same things.

Some of the things God was telling them was:

  1. Israel has disobeyed and worshipped other pretend gods and will now be have bad consequences (being taken captive into Assyria and then Babylon)

Isaiah 10:5-6, 7:17-20, 8:1-10, Amos 2:6-8, 3:10, 5:11-12, 5:21-24, Micah 1:6-3:12,

2. Judah has also made bad choices and will be taken away

Jeremiah 1:15, Zephaniah 1:2, 1:4, 2:10, Joel 1:13-14, 3:16-21

3. When His people come back to Him, God will later forgive them and bring them back to the promised land

Isaiah 44:28, Jeremiah 29:10, Obadiah 1:17-18, Zephaniah 3:17

4. God will then punish the people who took Israel and Judah captive

Zephaniah 2:13-15, 10:11, Isaiah 31:8-9, Jeremiah 25:12, Obadiah 1:3, Nahum,

5. A messiah (a savior) would come to be with and to save and forgive God’s people once and for all (this would be Jesus).

Isaiah 2:3-4, 7:14,  9:6-7, 28:16, 35:4-6, 42:1-7, 49:6-7, 53:1-12, Jeremiah 23:5-6, 31:31-34, Ezekiel 34:23-24, Daniel 9:26, Joel 2:32, Micah 5:2, Zechariah 9:9, 11:4-13, 13:7, Malachi 3:1, 4:5-6

And ALL of these things came true. In the book of Proverbs 30:5, it says, “Every word of God proves true.”

There are still some things in the Bible, some prophecies that have not happened yet. But we know they will, because we know EVERY word of God proves true.

Every thing God said would happen did. Israel and Judah disobeyed, they were taken away, they were later restored (returned to their homes and made right with God), their enemies were punished and God brought them a savior, who would be with them, love them, die for them and forgive them.

**There is of course SO much more we could do with these books (and i hope to add some more lessons in later) but this is an introductory lesson for preschoolers**

We made a little Bible today with the names of the books of prophecy. (You may note there are several not included in this list and that’s because we’ll be covering more from them later: Jonah, Ezra, Nehemiah, Daniel, Hosea, Habakkuk, Haggai, and Malachi)

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Thanks for joining us today, love to you all!