God Chooses David After Saul Proves Disobedient

This week we learned about God's justice and mercy -- His justice in removing Saul as King because of his disobedience and His mercy in raising up David, a godly deliverer for the Israelites.

We opened by putting together a puzzle of our new verse, the fifth verse of Psalm 1. (Patrick knows the whole psalm already, and preached to us beautifully by reciting it in its entirety!) We missed Nicholas and Jacob, who were both out this week.

In our classroom, we practiced finding the Book of Psalms again by flopping open to the center of our Bibles, and then worked on finding this new verse using the BIG chapter number and the little verse number. We used an orange highliter this week to underline the verse.

Then each child was given a length of crepe paper streamer. We played our new CD and sang the verses as we waved the streamers. This was a good review of all the verses, including our new one.

At Bible time, I opened by showing them a beautiful copy of "Pilgrim's Progress". We looked through it a little bit. Then I said, "Now suppose I gave this book to one of you children and trusted that child to take care of it. And then suppose that that child took out a crayon and started scribbling all over the book." I paused for a moment and let them think about that. "Imagine these beautiful pages all covered over with black crayon so you couldn't even read it anymore. I would have to take the book away from that child, wouldn't I! I couldn't let the book get ruined! Well, in today's Bible story, God had to take something away from someone too."

In telling of Saul's disobedience, I explained that God saw Saul's incomplete obedience as disobedience. Even though he killed the Amalekites, as God had told him to, he did not destroy every living thing. Then he claimed to have obeyed God! But God did not see it that way. Disobeying shows that we don't love God and have faith in His promises. Disobedience always brings consequences and so God took the kingdom away from Saul. But I also explained how God had mercy on his people by choosing a good leader -- David, who was just a little shepherd at the time. God doesn't delight in outward appearances or showiness, but in a heart of faith that loves Him.

I asked the children if they could think of another story, one of the first ones in the Bible, where someone disobeys God and has something taken away from them? They got this right away -- Adam and Eve disobeyed God and had their beautiful Garden of Eden taken away from them. Then I reminded them that God did not leave Adam and Eve hopeless. He promised He would send a redeemer to restore all things lost. And who is the Promised Redeemer? Jesus! In today's story, God also gave His people hope -- by choosing David as King, a man after God's own heart. That theme of failure and redemption echoes over and over again throughout the Scriptures, pointing us to God's greatest display of His glory: Christ dying on the cross to save sinful man and reverse the curse.

We colored and answered questions -- they had listened well to this story and got nearly all the questions right. Then we worked on our attributes of God book. We have four of 10 attributes completed. SarahClaire covered her paper with stars and made only one green, saying, "There is only ONE God!" (Just like there is only one green star!)

If anyone did not get our new CD (Jingles 11-20) please send me an e-mail or put a comment on this blog, and I'll bring you a copy Wednesday! Thank you for sending these engaging little people each week.