Write kids names on board with total attendance!

September 24, 2017 God Leads His People (Planet 1) God s Leaders Are Obedient!!! Lesson Highlights: Scripture References: Genesis 11:27-12:1-5 Teaching Point: God moves to build for Himself a great nation and begins by choosing Abram who listens and obeys by faith. Unit Memory Verse: Genesis 12:2-3 And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. Story Snap Shot A lot of time has passed since the day of Noah to Abram. It is almost 400 years! In the time of Noah, Noah built an arc and gave a worthy sacrifice to God. Noah was obedient by God s grace. Now, God calls another man. God calls Abram out of a pagan society who certainly did not know God. Abram s faith moves him to listen and obey the words God speaks. God s plan to save His people this time involves a man from Ur who would become the father of many nations. It is this man through whom all the nations of the world would be blessed. Write kids names on board with total attendance! After the Rally Idea: use the icebreaker question to introduce this morning s topic and get the kids talking! 1 P a g e

Planet 1, OT Lesson 6: God s Leaders Are Obedient Icebreaker Question: Open your Bibles!!! (Get the kids to open their bibles and read! We will do a quick recap then hit the lesson!) Recap: Last Sunday we read about Noah. God told Noah He would flood the earth because of the wickedness of man. God saved Noah and his family by having him build and arc and take selected animals to repopulate the earth! It was a story of God s wrath and mercy. God has another man who will listen and obey to His plan for the restoration of mankind! Read Genesis 11:29-30 What were the names of Abram s and Nahor s wife? (Sarai and Milcah) What is different from Sarai? (She is mentioned about being barren.) What does being barren mean? (She could not have kids.) Do you think being barren was a big deal? (Back in the Old Testament it was a really big deal. Women had status by having children. Children helped support the family as the parents aged.) Do you ever want to get married one day? Why or why not? Read: Genesis 11:31-32 What was the name of Abram s dad? (Terah) What was the name of Abram s wife or Terah s daughter in law? (Sarai) 2 P a g e

September 24, 2017 God Leads His People (Planet 1) God s Leaders Are Obedient!!! Read: Genesis 12:1-3 What did God ask Abram to do? (Leave your country and go to a land God will show you.) Would that be hard to leave your extended family? Why or why not? What did God promise? (God promised Abram would be father of a nation.) Did Sarai have any kids yet? (No she was barren..genesis 11:30) What will happen to the name of Abram? (It will become great!) What if someone was kind to Abram and his family? (God will bless them.) What if someone was mean to Abram and his family? (God will curse them.) Can you imagine having that kind of blessing from God? Would that make you pretty confident? Read: Genesis 12:4-5 Did Abram obey? (Yes.) How old was Abram? (He was 75.) Is that old? Is that too old to start a family? Who did they take with them? (They took everything and everyone in the family.) Where did they settle? (They settled in the land of Canaan.) 3 P a g e

Planet 1, OT Lesson 6: God s Leaders Are Obedient Can you find where Abram started and where he ended up? Would you be comfortable just leaving home without a map? Where would you want to go? Are these places you have seen or heard about? Would you go to a place you had never heard of? Do you think Abram knew what Canaan was like? Would you feel uneasy bringing all your family and possessions to an unknown place? Why or why not? Do you think Abram was uneasy or confident? How will God make a nation from a man who is 75 years old with a barren wife? Take Home: God gives a command to Abram to leave his home country for an unknown land. God promises Abram that he will be the father of a nation. A nation that will have an exclusive relationship or alliance with God. In fact, any nation or person who blesses him will be blessed and any nation or person who curses him will be cursed. That is a pretty huge blessing. Even though Abram is 75 and his wife shows no signs of being able to have children, Abram obeys. His story is like the story of Noah. Men of faith who live lives of obedience not perfection. 4 P a g e

September 24, 2017 God Leads His People (Planet 1) God s Leaders Are Obedient!!! Prayer Time Before you pray, allow the kids to share with you things that are happening in their lives. Be sure you write these down with their names for you to pray for as the week goes along. Ask them the things they mentioned the previous week. Older kids can be asked if they will pray for another who mentions something. As the leader, begin by opening in prayer and thanking God for this lesson: Praise God for being a trustworthy Father who takes cares of His people. Ask God to give us hearts that will trust and obey Him especially when it s hard. Pray for any specific requests named either by praying yourself or by opening it up to those who said they would pray. Activities and Crazy Ideas: Activity 1: Follow the Leader Play follow the leader. Remind them of the story of Abraham! Activity 2: Trust and Obey Sing the old hymn Trust and Obey. The children will be amazed by your desire to demonstrate the huge value of obedience. You can also play the hymn as well on your phone! Remind them of the story of Abraham! Activity 3: Promises Promises Make a promise to the kids that you will follow up on the next Sunday. For example, you may say. I promise to wear a funny hat or bake cookies. See if you can get the kids to promise something. The key is to remember and keep your promise like God remembers and keeps His promises! 5 P a g e

Planet 1, OT Lesson 6: God s Leaders Are Obedient Activity 4: Obey or Disobey You can play the game red light or green light but use the word obey which means go or disobey which means stop. After the game see if the kids can remember when Abraham was obedient and when he was disobedient! Activity 5: God Says This is the classic game Simon Says but The leader is God (Simon) and the children are Abram! If they do well you can even change their name to Abraham! But we all know that it is only by God s grace! Activity 6: I Have Moved Share a moving story with the kids. Tell them how God was faithful to provide for you! Activity 7: Trust and Obey Divide the kids up into two teams. Have the members of each team stand side by side in pairs. Tell them that Abram had to listen carefully to God to go to the land He would show him, but he never knew where that was. He had to trust that God was leading Him in the right way. We re going to play a relay game that will help us to see what it s like to trust and obey. On the whiteboard, draw two large circles and place dry erase markers below those spots. Have the first child in line help his partner put a blindfold on. Tell the child who can t see that their partner is going to lead them to the board just by speaking and then they have to get the marker and write their name in the circle without going out of the lines. Their teammates cannot touch them to help. Only verbal commands can be used. They will then take off their blindfold and rush back to their teams and tag the next pair to go. First team to get all the names in the circle wins. At the end, talk to them about the game. (Was it easy to hear with everyone talking? Was it easy to do what they said? Did you find yourself not really trusting your teammate because you were worried you d fall or bump into a wall?) Point out to them that the more they trusted their teammate s skill and character (how well they could give directions and how well they could 6 P a g e

September 24, 2017 God Leads His People (Planet 1) God s Leaders Are Obedient!!! trust them not to try to hurt them), the more willing they were to do what he/she said. The same is true in our relationship with God. The more we learn about how strong and powerful and all knowing He is, the more we will believe He really knows what He s doing so we ll obey better and faster. Along the way, we have to grow to trust His heart to know that He is for us, not against us. The Bible tells us that He loves us and wants good for us. We will only obey Him when we trust in Him. Activity 8: Are You Listening? Tell the kids that today they heard about someone who really had to listen well and obey to be a good leader for God. So, to get ready they re going to practice their listening skills by playing a game of Simon Says. Make the game harder by having the kids do two things at once like motions with sounds Notes and Commentary 11:29 The name Sarai is later changed to Sarah (see 17:15). Sarai s barrenness is an obvious barrier to the continuation of Abram s family line. The initial barrenness of the patriarchs wives is a recurring motif in Genesis (see 25:21; 29:31). 11:31 32 According to the Kultepe Texts from the nineteenth century B.C. (texts composed by Assyrian traders who clearly understood such matters), Haran was an important crossroads and commercial center in the ancient Near East. 11:31 Although Terah s ambition is to move his family from Ur to Canaan, they do not complete the journey, but settle in northern Mesopotamia at Haran (the location in Turkey is now called Eskiharran, old Harran ). The spelling of the town name Haran in Hebrew is quite distinct from the name of Terah s third son. (This is the Bible s first reference to the land of Canaan. But the Ebla archives, found in northern Syria in the 7 P a g e

Planet 1, OT Lesson 6: God s Leaders Are Obedient 1970s, contain clay tablets dating to c. 2300 B.C. They make mention of certain geographical places found in Scripture, such as Sodom and Zeboiim, two cities in the episode of the war of the kings [Gen. 14:1 16]. In addition, the first time the name Canaan is used in extrabiblical literature is at Ebla, in tablets that predate the biblical writings by centuries.) 11:32 By way of completing this short introduction to Terah s family, the narrative records his death at the age of 205. If Abram was born when p 71 Terah was 70 years old (see v. 26), and if Abram was 75 years old when he departed for Canaan (see 12:4), then Terah died 60 years after Abram s departure (70 + 75 + 60 = 205). In Acts 7:4, however, Stephen says that Abram left Haran after the death of Terah. A simple way to resolve the chronological difficulty is to suppose that Stephen was following an alternative text (represented today in the Samaritan Pentateuch), which says that Terah died at the age of 145. 1 12:1 3. Verses 1 3 record God s call to Abram, and verses 4 9 record Abram s obedience. The call had two imperatives, each with subsequent promises. The first imperative was to get out (Leave your country go to the land, v. 1), and the second imperative was to be a blessing. (The second imperative, in v. 2, is imprecisely rendered in many versions, including the NIV, as a prediction, you will be a blessing. But lit., it is, Be a blessing. ) His leaving started a chain of reactions. If Abram would get out of Ur, God would do three things for him, so that he could then be a blessing in the land (the second imperative); and he had to be that blessing so that God would do three more things for him. This symmetry should not be missed, for it strengthens the meaning. Abram s calling had a purpose: his obedience would bring great blessing. Three promises were based on God s call for Abram to leave his land: (a) a great nation, (b) a blessing for Abram, and (c) a great name (v. 2). These promises would enable him to be a blessing (the second imperative, v. 2). Based on this obedience were God s three promises to: (a) bless those who blessed him, (b) curse anyone who would treat him lightly, and (c) bless the families of the earth through him (v. 3). To bless or curse Abram was to bless or curse Abram s God. Unfortunately God often had to use other nations to discipline His people because, far from being a blessing to the world, they were usually disobedient. The third promise takes on its greatest fulfillment in the fact that Jesus Christ became the means of blessing to the world (Gal. 3:8, 16; cf. Rom. 9:5). The idea of faith is stressed in these passages. Abram was told to leave several things his country, his people, and his father s household (Gen. 12:1). But he was told nothing about the land to which he must go. His departure required an unparalleled act of faith. The themes of blessing and cursing are heightened here. In fact this is the central passage of the Book of Genesis. Here begins the program that was so desperately needed in chapters 1 11 (a purpose of which was c. about, approximately 1 Crossway Bibles. (2008). The ESV Study Bible (pp. 70 71). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles. NIV New International Version 8 P a g e

September 24, 2017 God Leads His People (Planet 1) God s Leaders Are Obedient!!! to show that this blessing was needed). This was the call; Abram responded to it by faith. The ensuing promises were formulated later, under covenant conditions (15:8 21). 2 Lecture Notes Okay, let s see if we can remember what we learned last week. Who did we learn about? (Noah) Right. We learned only Noah was righteous before God. Only Noah believed in God and followed Him. And Noah was faithful for a really long time, wasn t he? He built the ark day after day. Then the water came and Noah and his family stayed on that boat for more than a year! As soon as he got off the boat, what did Noah do? (sacrificed to God) That s right. Noah sacrificed animals which was a really big deal because there weren t that many left, were there? Just the ones on the boat. Noah had to do a couple of really hard things, but he did them because he loved God and had faith in God. Today we re going to learn about another hard thing God asked a man to do. But first let s talk about what s happened since the flood. About 400 years have passed, and guess what? Things have gotten really bad...again. In Genesis 11, we learn that instead of turning to God for life after the flood, the people were choosing to live for themselves. They wanted to be famous. They wanted power. They wanted to do whatever they wanted just like before. But remember God s promise to Noah to all of us? (rainbow, not to flood the earth again) God remembered and didn t send another flood to wipe them out. Instead, He did some really amazing things. Like in one place in the Bible we learn He messed up everyone s language! Before, everyone spoke the same language remember they all came from Noah s family? But God gave them different languages all at once and made them scatter all over the earth. But they still didn t love God. They still didn t obey Him or seek Him. Then in Genesis 11, God brought a new plan to earth. Turn with me there, and let s look at verse 31 and 32. 2 Ross, A. P. (1985). Genesis. In J. F. Walvoord & R. B. Zuck (Eds.), The Bible Knowledge Commentary: An Exposition of the Scriptures (Vol. 1, p. 47). Wheaton, IL: Victor Books. 9 P a g e

Planet 1, OT Lesson 6: God s Leaders Are Obedient We have some new people to learn about. Look at this map. We learn that there s a guy named Terah (TEE-rah) who left his homeland called Ur and traveled to a place called Haran (HAIR-un). Aren t those weird sounding names? Very different from our names and places. This is Ur. (point to it on the map provided at the end of the lesson) It was located about where the country of Iraq is, far away from where we are. We know some things about that area during those days. They were pretty wealthy and had some amazing things like a large temple called a ziggurat (ZIG-errat). We ve got a picture of a ziggurat that was there about when our story takes place. (show them) This is where the people of Ur thought their gods lived. Their priests would go in and offer sacrifices to statues. They weren t worshiping God; they weren t following Him as His leaders. They were going their own way, weren t they? Just like all the rest. But God is so loving and so good and so patient. He had decided to show the world what He was like. Remember Terah was leaving Ur? Well, the Bible actually tells us in Acts chapter 7 that Terah didn t just decide to leave one day. You keep your place in Genesis but let me read those verses to you. (read Acts 7:2-3) So, Terah actually decided to go with his son but died in Haran. Abram was obeying God. God was calling Abram to a new place as His new leader. You know what was amazing? Did you hear what God said to Abram? Remember I just read that God said, 'Go out from your land and from your family and go into the land that I will show you.' And what did Abram do? (left Ur) He just left. That s amazing. You know why? He was just like everyone else around him. He was just living his life in Ur with his wife and family. He didn t follow God before. God had changed Abram s heart. Now, he loved God and could obey Him. Then one day, God speaks. That s amazing, too. God speaks. He talks with Abram. God who created the stars no man has ever seen God who gives life and breath to every living thing God who knows everything who is so big and powerful and holy that God speaks to a man and calls him to go. And we learned Abram wasn t alone; he had his wife, Sarai (SAY-rai rai rhymes with lie) and his nephew, Lot, and his dad and lots of people who worked for him. What were they leaving behind? They were raised just like the others in Ur with all the idols. This was his home. They had friends. They had a life. What do you think it would have been like to leave everyone you know and everything you have? (see what they say) And would everyone understand why you did it when you said, I m going because God spoke to me and told me to leave.? (see what they say) They don t even know this God. All they know is their own way. They don t love God or follow Him. But just like Noah, Abram was a man who listened when God spoke. He believed God, so the Bible tells us they went. Where was Abram to go? Did God tell him where he 10 P a g e

September 24, 2017 God Leads His People (Planet 1) God s Leaders Are Obedient!!! was going? (no) So, God didn t even tell him where he s going. Would that be okay with you? (see what they say) Abram trusted God so he obeyed, and they went to a place called Haran. That s about right here on our map. (show them) God was leading them to a part of the world that would be good for traveling. Right across the middle is just desert. But here is a part of the world that gets rain and has food and animals. God is a good leader. And when He asks us to follow Him, He takes care of what we need. But sometimes it s hard. Sometimes what God is asking us to do seems really scary and difficult. Or maybe you ve moved here from a place you really liked you had friends and family around you but now you don t know anyone. Or maybe you ve started at a new school or a new class and the people there aren t the ones you re used to. Maybe someone you love is sick. Maybe your parents have been having trouble finding a job, or are fighting more. There are lots of things God brings into our lives that are really hard. And, like Abram, God usually doesn t tell us the way to go or how it s all going to work out. But the promises He made to Abram are important for us to hear. Listen to the first verses of Genesis 12. (read Genesis 12:1-5 to them) God called out to Abram while he was in Haran and told him it was time to leave again. But this time, God gave Abram a great promise. God told Abram He would be with him that He would bless him. But that blessing wasn t just for Abram. God said that because of Abram all the families of the earth would be blessed. God s asking us to believe Him today, too. He wants us to know His promises are ours not because anything good we ve done but actually because of Jesus. God isn t just offering to save us from our sins, but to be our Father. We really can be His children. That means we can trust Him to take care of us when He asks us to do hard things. What God wants is for his children to obey Him just like Abram. To obey immediately to head toward our hard places knowing our Father is the one who s asking us to do it, to be His leaders here so that others can be blessed. We re going to be learning more about Abram in the next few weeks. So, we ll be able to see how God kept His promises to Abram and what happens to his family. For now, let s pray together and ask God to help us to trust Him to be the kind of leaders who can obey Him especially when it s hard. Suggested Follow-up Activities 11 P a g e

Planet 1, OT Lesson 6: God s Leaders Are Obedient Teachers are free to choose the activities that they feel are best for their group. The idea is that as the children work and play, remind them of the truths they just learned. Scripture Memory: Figure out your reward system for memorizing the Scriptures provided in this section. Give the children several opportunities to tell it to you in class. Play a memory game with the kids if you have time. Craft: Packing Up Remind the kids that we talked about the time when God called a man named Abram and his wife, Sarai, to leave their home and go to a new place. They didn t know where it would be or how they would get there or what it would be like along the way. They obeyed because they trusted God, believed by faith that He was the true and living God. The more we trust Him, the faster and better we also will obey. Give each child a cardstock copy of the craft page. Have them color it as they d like. While they re working give each child a piece of fabric that is about 3 X5 along with a brown or black pipe cleaner. Have them use glue or clear tape to adhere the pipe cleaner to the top of the tent across the two poles with the edges of it overlapping either side. Next, they ll glue the fabric to the pipe cleaner between the two poles only so that it hangs down to form a door. Show them that they can roll up their fabric and use the sides of the pipe cleaner to hold the tent flap up. Let them glue several pieces of cereal to the baskets of bread. And finally, let them paint the bottom with liquid glue all along the ground where the desert sand would be. They ll then take it over to where you have a bin of sand available and sprinkle their ground with it. Materials: cardstock copies of the craft page; markers or crayons; liquid glue; clear tape if desired; scissors; material for tent flap; pipe cleaners; bin of fine sand; cereal Craft: The Calling Remind the kids that we talked about the time when God called a man named Abram and his wife, Sarai, to leave their home and go to a new place. They didn t know where it would be or how they would get there or what it would be like along the way. They obeyed because they trusted God, believed by faith that He was the true and living God. The more we trust Him, the faster and better we also will obey. Give each child a cardstock copy of the scene as well as a copy of the verse and the figure of Abram. Have them color the scene and Abram as they d like. Next, have them glue the verse in place where indicated. Lastly, show them how to bend the tab back behind the figure. They ll then glue this tab in place on the scene so that when Abram is standing, you can t see the figure of him kneeling. Have them use liquid glue to make small dots on many of the stars. They 12 P a g e

September 24, 2017 God Leads His People (Planet 1) God s Leaders Are Obedient!!! can then take their paper to where you have a bin of glitter and sprinkle some on their paper. Materials: copies of the scene and figures; scissors; stick glue; markers or crayons; liquid glue; silver or gold glitter Suggested Study for Leaders Great Ziggurat of Ur uncovered in present day Iraq: 13 P a g e

Planet 1, OT Lesson 6: God s Leaders Are Obedient 14 P a g e