Passages to Study: Exodus 3:1-22; 4:1-9.
To read with the class: Exodus 3:1-10.
Memorization text: Younger children - 1 Thess. 1:9. “Ye turned to God from idols to
serve the living and true God.”
Older children - 1 Thess. 1:9.
OBJECTIVES: To show that
1. In the daily activities of life, God draws near and can speak to us anywhere we are.
2. He wants us to see that He is the living and true God, the One we ought to serve.
3. He does not speak until we are ready to pay attention.
4. Because He is all powerful, we ought to trust Him.
SCENE No. 1. A country area with a well. Shepherds and shepherdesses with their
flocks.
DEVELOPMENT OF THE LESSON:
- Despite having grown up in Pharaoh’s palace, Moses chooses the side of his
oppressed people, the Israelites, and refuses the “pleasures of sin”.
- Because of a hasty action in which he killed an Egyptian, Moses is obliged to flee the
country.
- Recently arrived in Midian from Egypt, Moses draws water from a well for the sheep of
some shepherdesses, while other shepherds look on with displeasure.
- Moses continues to show willingness to serve others. Ex. 2:16-21.
Apl. This is a quality that should be found in everyone. Encourage the children to
show kindness.
- As in the case of the Lord Jesus, Moses came to serve, not to be served.
- As was also true of the Lord, Moses acquires a wife in a distant land.
SCENE No. 2. Moses in a field, surrounded by sheep. Sug. A figure of light
could represent the voice and presence of God, when He speaks to Moses from the burning
bush.
DEVELOPMENT OF THE LESSON:
- After many years of working as a shepherd of sheep, Moses has a meeting with God.
Cns. It is while we carry on the daily activities of life that we will find God drawing
near to us, His creatures. Apl. Children should realize that God can meet them
anywhere, in their school activities, home life, even at play, etc.
- God reveals Himself to Moses in a desert thorn bush.
- He shows Himself to be Fire which purifies but which does not consume the bush.
Apl. God is present among His people (represented by the thorn bush).
- He does not tolerate their sin but neither does He destroy them.
- Moses observes a bush that burns without being consumed and upon drawing near to see
what is happening, hears his name called twice.
Cmt. Ask the children what normally happens when fire burns in a forest. Draw to
their attention the phenomena that fire is present in the branches of the bush which
remain green and unburnt.
- God does not speak to Moses until He has his full attention.
Apl. God calls people but waits to have their attention before revealing Himself to them.
Music, TV, friendships, and magazines are some of the distractions that occupy us
when we ought to be paying attention to God.
- God then begins to reveal Himself to Moses, first as a HOLY God, then as the LIVING God
who sees and hears and has power to help.
- Moses had to know God first in order to be able to speak for Him later on.
- Forty years earlier, Moses thought he was capable of helping the Israelites, but now he
is aware of his own limitations.
- Moses excuses himself time and again from accepting the work God is calling him to do,
for he now has no confidence in himself.
- What Moses considers a hindrance is the very weakness which will oblige him to count on
God in every situation.
Apl. God wants people to place their confidence in Him, and not in themselves. 2ͺ Cor.
4:7.
- God reveals Himself to Moses as the I AM, the ever existing one ready and able to
help His people.
SCENE No. 3. Moses standing with a shepherd’s staff. Figure of a serpent and a
leprous hand.
DEVELOPMENT OF THE LESSON:
- God gives Moses some signs to demonstrate His power.
- Moses’ experience with the staff and his own hand is to teach him 1) the presence
of divine power; and 2) not to have confidence in his own heart and thoughts.
- The staff which shepherds normally depended on for help, turns into a fearsome creature.
Cmt. The Lord is going to show Moses how obedience to His will bring deliverance from
fear.
- Moses’ dependable staff is shown to be unworthy of his trust for the task to
be performed.
Apl. Moses was not to depend upon himself for his future work as leader of the people of
God.
- The serpent created at the moment the staff was thrown down causes Moses to flee because
of fear.
Lxn. When Moses would come before Pharaoh, he would experience similar fear and perhaps
wish to flee.
- Moses is ordered to grasp the serpent by the tail to show him that in the presence of a
fearsome monarch, obedience to God would bring power to overcome.
- The singular incident would be described to the elders as proof that God had appeared to
him. Ex. 4:5.
Apl. Moses would have to obey God when face to face with Pharaoh who like a serpent sought
to destroy Israel.
- As Moses obeys God by grasping the serpent’s tail, miraculously the serpent changes
to it’s former state of a staff with which Moses normally carried out his duties.
- The staff is a symbol of how God would use him in his future work. He was to trust
and obey.
- Later, before Pharaoh, he would have to obey God despite fear in his heart.
- The leprosy in his hand let Moses see that what is in one’s heart and which comes
out in the activities of the rest of the body.
- Moses must distrust the thoughts of his own heart.
Apl. If we realize how corrupt our own heart is, it will humble us and teach us that power
is of God.
Apl. All true wisdom comes from God. He is worthy of our trust and it is He who
guides our steps following salvation.
- It is difficult to walk the path of obedience. To throw down the rod and put his
hand into his bosom the first time was not difficult. To take the serpent by the
tail and put his leprous hand into his bosom the second time was something else again.
- The sign of the water turned into blood would be used to teach the Egyptians that this
essential part of life is provided by the God of the Israelites.
- God can use water as an instrument of death, if it is His sovereign will.
SCENE No. 4.
DEVELOPMENT OF THE LESSON:
Visual aid: A gift wrapped package marked “love” and, partly covering it, a
cross.
Apl. God’s love and protection of His own comes through trusting the work of the Lord
Jesus on the cross.
- In Moses’ case, the Love of God was seen in the restoration of his leprous hand.
Visual aid: On a light blue and white background, write the word “God”.
- The Holiness of God is seen in the command to Moses to remove his footwear and in the
teaching that the place where he was meeting God was “holy ground”.
Visual aid: Pictures of the earth as a globe, the starry heavens and the third
heaven (something representing Heaven, the presence of God). This is to shown that God
exercises His power in all spheres.
- God’s power is seen when Moses’ rod is changed into a serpent and then back
into a rod again.
- God’s power is always greater than that of Satan, (represented by the serpent).
From His throne in Heaven God exercises His power over the universe today.
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