prophets

Amos/Hosea

~ hebidsthemcome ~ Leave a comment

Welcome back all! Yesterday at our house, we did Jonah found HERE.

hosea

Today’s lesson is about two prophets. If you remember, a prophet is someone who talks to God and then tells the people what God wants them to know.

After King Solomon, God’s people (remember those 12 families?) they split up and wanted two different kings. So there was the family of Judah and then everyone else (called Israel). The kings of Judah sometimes obeyed God, but the kings of Israel did not. And the people in Israel were not obeying God very well either.

Two of the prophets (men God told to talk to His people) were named Amos and Hosea.

Amos was a man from Judah. It wasn’t his job to be a prophet….his job was to take care of trees. He was just a regular guy that God used to tell the people of Israel to “KNOCK IT OFF!” They were not being nice to the people who were poor or helpless. The people were not making good choices. (Amos 2:6-8, 3:10, 5:11-12, 8:4-6). Most of the people had a LOT of money and they thought they were HOT STUFF. They forgot God’s words about helping other people and showing God’s love…..they only loved themselves and spent all their time thinking about themselves and all their money buying things ONLY for themselves. So Amos was from Judah and when he came to tell the people to remember what God wanted them to do, they said, “He’s from Judah….he’s not one of us.” And they didn’t listen to him. God warned the people if they didn’t stop that there would be consequences. (And later there would be, when Israel gets taken over and the people have to LEAVE God’s promised land).

Hosea lived at the same time as Amos and he ALSO told the people to knock it off. But when HE talked to the people he also said if they would come back to God and obey Him, that God would forgive them and save them from the consequences. Even though God gives us consequences for our sins (our bad choices against Him), He will forgive us and always love us.

These prophets told the people to stop being mean to other people…stop thinking only about YOU. You can’t just pray and read the Bible…you have to DO what the Bible says…and that means loving other people. God tells His people in Hosea 6:6 that it is more important for us to KNOW Him and to SHOW His love to other people, than to go to church or do “church things” the right way.

The people of Israel did not listen though and they would be taken away from God’s promised land. But when they would later ask God to forgive them, He would.

When we mess up, God forgives us too, but we should also try to not only pray or read the Bible but DO what it says–to love others like God loves us.

Thanks for joining us. 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!

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!