I taught Isaiah the week before Christmas–and chose to branch off on my own. I still used the “official” worksheet some, but I made my own worksheet for what I really wanted to emphasize: Jesus.
Who is Jesus in Isaiah? I asked.
We learned about the Son of a virgin, of Immanuel which means “God with us”. We learned that He is Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. We read of the shoot from the stump of Jesse, the precious cornerstone. We learned about God’s servant, a man of sorrows who was like a sheep led to the slaughter.
We studied Jesus–and my teaching heart began to sing again.
My first lesson of the new year, we played hangman to start the class.
“Sovereign:” our hangman read. “ruler, one who is in control.”
I handed out clay to each student, and read Jeremiah 1:4-10. We talked about how God had planned in advance what Jeremiah would be and do. We saw that God was sovereign in calling Jeremiah to ministry-and in accomplishing that ministry through Jeremiah.
We went to the potter’s house and saw a potter in complete control of the clay. We saw God as sovereign over nations being built and destroyed–just like the potter was in complete control of the clay.
We looked at the prophecies of Jeremiah and saw them as evidence of God’s sovereignty. They came true not just because God knew the future, but because He controls the future.
We talked about the implications of God’s sovereignty. We talked about how this is terrifying to people who don’t know Jesus and who are disobedient to God. God is in control and they have made themselves His enemy. We talked about how people who trust in Jesus can be comforted by and confident in God’s sovereignty. We talked about how God has already said what He’s making out of believers’ lives–about how He’s making them so they look like Jesus.
We didn’t have a worksheet this week. I knew what I wanted to teach and I wasn’t willing to let any piece of paper from the curriculum dilute the teaching.
It felt good, freeing, to be teaching meat instead of pablum.
To be continued…