Prophecy: Jesus will be born of a virgin

1. HOOK: Matching game: Animal & their young

• Prepare separate pix of animals and their young for kids to match them.
• E.g. What do dogs give birth to? Puppies.
  What do cats give birth to? Kittens.
  How about snakes? They lay eggs that hatch into baby snakes.

• Just like we get puppies from dogs, what do we get from sinners? Yup, more sinners. 
• Last week we heard about how when Adam sinned, sin entered the world. Because Adam sinned, his children, grandchildren, great, great, great, great children and everyone in this world are born as sinners. We know the result of sin is death. 
• But God promised that a descendant of the Eve will defeat the serpent. God wanted to change our family line so that we will not continue to be sinners but become righteous. Today we know He was talking about Eve’s great, great, great, great …. Great, grandson, Jesus.
• One thing we cannot choose in life is who our parents are. But long before Jesus was born — a few hundred years before, in fact — God’s prophet, Isaiah, had already told the people what sort of person Jesus’ mother would be.

2.  Lesson: We are part of a great family, thanks to Jesus!

•  Prophecy #2: Jesus will be born of a virgin 
• Isaiah the prophet said, “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.”(Isa 7:14)
• The mother of the Saviour of the world would be a virgin. (A virgin is someone who had never had any sexual relationship with another person.) This was special because virgins don’t get pregnant. You need both a father and a mother to become pregnant. But in Jesus’ case, there will only be a mother. God Himself will be the father, not a man. 
• Hundreds of years after Isaiah, there was a young teenage girl lady called Mary. She was engaged to be married to a man named Joseph. 

The Big Picture: Prophecies about Jesus

1. HOOK: Guess the picture

• Show a picture bit by bit until it’s fully revealed. Get kids to guess what it is as soon as they can. 
• Can use this Kids Countdown or create your own pictures.

2. LESSON 

• The BIG PICTURE 
• Wasn’t guessing the pictures fun? Sometimes we see only a small part, and we don’t know what it is until all the many parts come together to form a big picture.
• That’s what God did for us. He had a plan from the beginning of time, and through thousands of years, He revealed bits of the puzzle, little by little, through His prophets.
• What was this big picture? That Jesus will come to save the world from sin. 
• There were more than 300 clues/prophecies about Jesus recorded in the Bible. We’ll look at some of them in the next few weeks. One of the earliest prophecies about Jesus was revealed early on, way back in the Garden of Eden.

Review of Solomon's Poetry Books

1. Lesson 

•  We’ve been looking at some of the books of the Bible that Solomon wrote:
• Song of Solomon 
• Proverbs
• Ecclesiastes

• Let’s see what you can remember from it:
  <use pix to associate each book>
   
• Song of Solomon 

• Who were the 2 main characters?
  The Shulamite girl and the shepherd/King Solomon

• How did the Shulamite see herself?
  Dark skinned, unwanted by her own family

• How did Solomon see the Shulamite girl?
  Fair, beautiful, flawless in every way >> God sees us the same way

• How did the Shulamite girl see Solomon?
  Attractive and full of love >> Picture of Jesus

• Key lesson: In Song of Solomon, we are reminded that God sees us as beautiful; We see Jesus as beautiful!

Overview of Ecclesiastes: Look to the Son!

1. Hook: Blow wind blow game

• We played the game “Blow, wind, blow” just now. Have you ever tried chasing after the wind? You can run all you want, jump all you want, tire yourself out completely, but you won’t be able to catch the wind. The wind blows here and there. You cannot get hold of it. 
• Sometimes we all live our lives trying as if we’re chasing the wind. We chase after pleasure. We chase after knowledge. We chase after wealth and riches. But in the end we are empty. 
• There’s one person who fills us up completely. We don’t have to run around to chase after Him. Because He was the one who came to look for us and to save us. Who is that person? Jesus!

2. Lesson: Overview of Ecclesiastes: Look to the Son!

• We’ve been looking at some of the books of the Bible that Solomon wrote: 
• Song of Solomon: God sees us as beautiful; We see Jesus as beautiful!
• Proverbs: Jesus is our Wisdom

• Today we take a look at Solomon’s 3^rd book — Ecclesiastes
• <help kids to pronounce … E-clee-sias-tis> 
• Ecclesiastes means “teacher” or “preacher” 
• Solomon (son of David, king in Jerusalem) probably wrote this book near the end of his life, when he was an old man.

• Ecclesiastes: reflection of Solomon’s life 
• The theme of the book can be summed up in one word: “Meaningless”
• Solomon writes, 
• “Meaningless! Meaningless! Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.” (1:2)
• All things are wearisome, more than one can say. (1:8) 
• There is nothing new under the sun. (1:9)

Overview of Proverbs: Jesus our Wisdom

1. Lesson: Overview of Proverbs: Jesus our Wisdom

• Besides building the Temple of God, King Solomon wrote several poetry books in the Bible.
• Last week, we learnt about one of them — Song of Solomon.
• What did we learn? God sees us as beautiful; We see Jesus as beautiful!

• Today, we will look at another book — Proverbs. 

• What’s a proverb?
• Proverbs are wise sayings about life to help people live right and make wise choices.
• The world is full of wise sayings/proverbs that we can learn from.
• E.g.
• Practise makes perfect: If we practise something over and over again, we will be very good at it. 
• Honesty is the best policy: We should always tell the truth 
• Slow and steady wins the race: We don’t have to be the fastest all the time, but if we hang in there, we will surely succeed; like the tortoise who was racing with the rabbit and didn’t give up. 

•  Wise Sayings of a Wise Man 
  • If you remember, King Solomon was the wisest man in the world. When God asked Solomon what he wanted, Solomon did not ask for riches or fame or long life. Instead he asked for wisdom.
  • Being a wise man, Solomon wrote many wise sayings/proverbs, about 3,000, which make up most of the book of Proverbs.
   

Overview of Song of Solomon: You are beautiful

1. Lesson (based on Song of Solomon)

• HOOK: 

• Ever heard couples who are very much in love talk about each other? What do you think they talk about? 
• “He is the most wonderful guy I ever met!” “She is the most beautiful girl in the world!”
• Show examples of people in love, e.g.:

o   Video: Shrek and Fionain love

o   Nick Vujicic on his wife Kanae Miyahara: “She has the most beautiful, wise, and warm eyes I’d ever seen. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. She is enchanting, confident and kindhearted”.

• God loves us so much that he uses so many examples of close human relationships to show us His love for us and tell us what He thinks of us. 
• Father and Son: Remember the son who left the father after getting his share of the father’s money? He ran away, spent all the money , finally came back home to his father who still loved him despite what he had done and welcomed him back as his son. 
• A friend: Jesus calls us his friends (John 15:13-14) – Jesus is our true friend who loved us so much that he laid down his life for us. 
• A husband and a wife: This is one of the closest relationships which we have on this earth. A husband and a wife have covenantal relationship, just like what God has with us. God wants us to know that our relationship with him is also like a husband and a wife because it is a very close relationship. God also uses the picture a bridegroom and his bride — just like Christ is the bridegroom, and we, the church, are His bride.

• King Solomon wrote a book called the Song of Solomon or the Song of Songs. This book is unlike any other book in the bible. It’s a special love story of a man and his bride.
• Here King Solomon appears as a young shepherd, falls in love with a Shulamite girl. He promises to marry her on his return. When he returns, much to her surprise, he appears as a king and takes her back to Jerusalem to be his bride.
• Throughout the book, Solomon talks about the girl, how beautiful she is; and she talks about Solomon, how beautiful he is.

A Walk-through Solomon's Temple

Lesson: A Walk-through Solomon's Temple (1 Kings 7, 2 Chron 4)

• Set up room according to the following layout

• Prepare kids outside the room:
• Today, we’re going to take a special tour of the temple of God that King Solomon built.
• Let’s walk slowly and very quietly so we can see all the different things inside.
• Note: Depending on crowd control, you may choose to have all the kids sit down in the “outer court area” while you talk about different parts of the temple, or have them follow you